East Servery to be ready by spring semester

By Josh Rutenberg     9/23/10 7:00pm

From a distance, the glass-walled structure near Will Rice College and Lovett College may not look like much, but upon students' return from winter break, the building will house the East Servery. Scheduled to open its doors on the same day students return for the spring semester, the new servery, which broke ground last February, will replace the old serveries at Lovett and Will Rice.

East Servery will feature a cr?pemaking area, along with many of the same novelties familiar to frequenters of West Servery, such as a built-in pizza oven, Facilities, Engineering and Planning Senior Project Manager Kathy Jones said.

"It will add some nice variety," Lovett junior Katie Jensen said of the planned cr?perie.

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Jones said the estimated cost for constructing the kitchen is $8 million, with a total project budget of $11 million after work orders and other FE&P fees.

East Servery, which was designed by Hopkins Architects, the same architecture firm that designed West Servery, will contain wood-paneled ceilings and many of the same kinds of materials found in West Servery. The servery will also take advantage of natural lighting from large glass panels lining the sides of the building.

FE&P accounted for the possible addition of a third college when designing the servery.

"It's been scaled to serve a third college in the future, which will be Sid Richardson [College]," Jones said.

Jones said FE&P originally planned to implement a kitchen that could serve up to three colleges with a servery that could house two colleges. When the economy slumped, Jones said construction material costs decreased, which allowed FE&P to expand the servery so that it could hold three colleges' worth of students, rather than two as previously planned.

For now, Sid's servery will remain separate from the East Servery.

"The good news for Will Rice and Lovett is the servery is built to capacity to handle three colleges," FE&P Communications Manager Susann Glenn said.

Planning in advance for the eventual addition of Sid Rich to the servery also allowed for better aesthetics in the design and integration of the servery with its surroundings, Jones said.

"We really didn't like how [the servery] would have been added on if a third college came online," Jones said about Sid. Jones said that by redesigning the servery, it will open up an area for a new quadrangle between Will Rice, Lovett and Sid.

Glenn said the new servery will fit into the existing cultures of Will Rice and Lovett.

"As commons-centered as [Will Rice and Lovett] are, I think this is really going to enhance that sense," Glenn said.

Glenn commended the student leadership at Will Rice and Lovett for involving the colleges in the construction process.

Evi Van Itallie, former head of the East Servery Committee at Will Rice, said everyone she talked to has been eager for the opening of East Servery but that Will Rice students have been concerned the servery would bring an influx of students from other colleges.

"East Servery can not get here soon enough," Will Rice sophomore John Socha said.

He even offered to help construction meet their winter deadline.

"If they can't get it up in time, I'm going to work with construction until they erect it," Socha said.

Van Itallie, a Will Rice senior, said that while the colleges wanted to include another late-night food service similar to The Hoot in West Servery, the physical confinements of the location prevented the addition of a walkthrough area that would be needed to separate the late-night service space from the rest of the servery.

With its construction, the East Servery has also opened up new spaces for Will Rice and Lovett.

A new community kitchen, built in the area formerly occupied by the Will Rice Servery, will replace the college's old community kitchen. Will Rice also received a new air-handling unit to circulate air for its commons from FE&P as part of the construction process, Glenn said.

Lovett will gain a new PDR and a study room from the construction, Jones said. Each will contain four skylights.

Glenn said that Lovett's new PDR will exhibit more functionality than the previous PDR, which had to be torn down for construction. New furniture in the PDR will be provided by FE&P.

Lovett President Drew Berger said Lovett's Construction Committee discussed with FE&P and the architects what kind of space the PDR and study room would be. However, Berger said he wanted to figure out architectural solutions to what he saw as problems with the rooms for turning in silverware and disposing of food. Berger, a Lovett College senior, said the rooms are too small to maneuver in and lack any order but that when he tried talking with architects about changing the layout, they were unwilling to listen.

"It was clear to me that there were simple things we could have done to solve this problem," Berger said. Berger said he will continue to work to fix the problem by organizing the waste disposal area.

In terms of environmental impact, FE&P has worked to reduce the overall environmental footprint of the building. Jones said that while energy consumption from operation makes LEED certification unlikely, FE&P has been as environmental as possible. As part of their greening efforts, FE&P uses low-volatile organic-compound emitting materials. Volatile organic compounds are often found in household materials such as paint and wood preservatives and can be a health concern. Other environmental initiatives by FE&P include purchasing materials within a 500-mile radius of campus, Jones said.

FE&P also installed energy-efficient windows and recycles material waste on site. While Jones said the final numbers could not yet be determined, she said FE&P recycles 88 percent of its construction waste on average.

A former part of the South Colleges parking lot isolated by construction will be developed into green space with trees relocated from a part of Lovett where the East Servery now stands.

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