Gregory and other college houses will be renovated this summer

While work continues on the new college house by Hill Field, other college houses will be undergoing some changes this summer.

As part of Residential Services’ plan to renovate all buildings, which has been ongoing for over 10 years , Gregory College House will see continued renovations this summer. Last year, the Class of 1925 building received upgrades to student rooms , and the same changes will be made this year to the Van Pelt Manor building.

In both buildings of Gregory, some common spaces will be remodeled and the courtyard between the two buildings will be expanded and landscaped. Each room will also receive a miniature refrigerator and microwave unit.

Harrison and Stouffer College Houses will receive new interior paint, and the Class of 1938 Lounge in Kings Court English College House will be upgraded .

In Van Pelt Manor in Gregory, all student rooms will be completely renovated with new flooring, furnishings and surfaces. One of the major changes will be to remove a “number of rooms” on the ground floor of the building to repurpose the space as multipurpose-use rooms, Director of Residential Services John Eckman said.

One of the rooms will be a state-of-the-art film screening room for Gregory’s Film Culture Residential Program . Others include a game room, a community kitchen and a TV lounge area .

“The idea is to really activate the ground floor of Van Pelt [Manor],” Eckman said.

In the Class of 1925 building, the Green House Lounge on the first floor will be renovated with an updated kitchen. The basement will also be transformed into an “activity area” with a TV lounge, game room and yoga/dance studio.

In the courtyard separating Class of 1925 and Van Pelt Manor, new brick will be laid down to “strengthen the connection” between the two buildings, Eckman said. The concrete structure next to St. Mary’s Church, left over from a previous construction project, will be torn down to create more space in the courtyard area .

These changes have primarily resulted from conversations between Residential Services and the college house and residential programs .

“The students have really driven this space already - all we’re doing is enhancing the space they’ve already given us,” Eckman said. He said they would try to start the renovations in Gregory as soon as Commencement concludes and estimates that the work would run until the first week of August.

Harrison and Stouffer were also chosen to be repainted this summer, since all of the other college houses have been repainted more recently. Residential Services hopes to establish a new cycle of repainting one to two buildings every summer starting this year. In addition, Stouffer will receive all new furniture.

As this will be the first year of the repaintings, Eckman said they are still finalizing the details of how much each college house will be painted and the costs of the updates.

Source: The Daily Pennsylvanian