MONTAGE
The
Serving the St. Louis Community College - Meramec community since 1964 • ACP Award Recipient VOLUME 58, ISSUE 5
FEB. 2, 2023
WWW.MERAMECMONTAGE.COM
From left to right: New classroom SC 197 was previously a storage room; a new, large room has been built in the cafeteria atrium; the former vending area is in the process of being converted into a distribution area. Photos by Jacob Politte.
The ‘Transformation’ Continues Demolition of three buildings along Big Bend scheduled to begin in May
Jacob Politte MANAGING EDITOR
W
hile the buildings are still unlocked, all offices and classrooms in the Business Administration and Communications South buildings have been fully vacated. During Spring Break, the library building will be vacated as materials are set to be moved into new spaces in the Student Center during the same week. “The library’s move won’t occur until Spring Break,” Meramec Campus President Feleccia Moore-Davis said. “We’ll be setting up the tutoring, we’ll be setting up the library during Spring Break so that students won’t have a disturbance of service during that time.” According to Moore-Davis, the demolitions of these buildings are
scheduled to begin sometime in May, although she noted that the timetable is subject to change. “The preparation for demolition will occur in April, and we will probably not see demolition until May,” she said. “The buildings have to be decommissioned first. We still have a lot of equipment and other things in all of those buildings that need to be decommissioned and repurposed to the degree we can repurpose them before they actually can be taken down.” When asked what decommissioning consists of, Moore-Davis outlined, “The electricity, the water, supplies, things like that. Also, there has to be a level of abatement that goes on prior to the buildings coming down. That work will begin after the library moves [to its new location].” These projects are a part of massive changes that are already being
implemented as a part of STLCC Transformed. The cafeteria and student center has already seen an overhaul, with new classrooms being added and rooms and areas being repurposed for other uses. Some spaces have been walled off to create new rooms, including a massive new room that takes up a sizable portion of what used to be part of the cafeteria atrium. An additional new classroom is also now present near the Veterans Affairs office. The Social Sciences building is also scheduled to be demolished as a part of Phase 1, but will remain standing for at least two more years so that the campus can have more available campus space. “We kept the Social Sciences building primarily because we needed the number of classrooms,” MooreDavis said. “So we couldn’t take down
Food Service Set To Return To STLCC
these major buildings without leaving something, or we would have had portable buildings adjacent to the campus. Social Science will come down after the new buildings are erected. Subsequently, those classrooms and offices [currently housed in Social Sciences] have all been planned to be incorporated into the new buildings.” While Moore-Davis isn’t sure of the exact nature of how demolition will be completed, she expects it to be completed in full by August. “I’m pretty sure by the time we come back in the fall that the demolition will be complete.” If students have any questions for Dr. Moore-Davis, she will be available to speak with them at the next “Mocha Monday” from 8:30-10:00am on Feb. 6 in the cafeteria atrium located in the Student Center.
Contract with American Dining Creations approved by the Board of Trustees Jacob Politte MANAGING EDITOR The Friday afternoon of March 13, 2020 was the last time food service operated at Meramec. During the pandemic, the college’s food service contract with Chartwells expired, and was not renewed; upon many students’ return to campus in 2021, they found that the Campus Bookstore had moved into the old cafeteria space, where its retail operations have remained ever since. While the bookstore has expanded their offerings to include some hot food, things in the Cafeteria are changing once more. This past month, a new food service contract with a different vendor, American Dining Creations, was signed by the college and recently approved by the Board of Trustees.
Meramec Campus President Feleccia Moore-Davis said that she and the college as a whole expect to have “some level” of food service by April 1. Moore-Davis said that student input, which is collected by the college in a variety of ways (through the Navigate app and at Campus Town Halls, especially) was a key factor in bringing food back to campus. “Some students were actually invited to the presentation that [American Dining Creations] gave as well,” Moore-Davis said. “So there was student representation.” Moore-Davis also said that the return of food service to the cafeteria won’t have a major impact on the bookstore’s on-going operations in the cafeteria space, as many items sold there will remain. While the sale and rental of textbooks will be moving to an online framework
through “Akademos” and renovations are being made adjacent to the space to make it a distribution space of sorts, many items will still remain where they are. “I believe that the bookstore will still be able to utilize the space that is facing the cafeteria right now,” she said. “So most of that activity will move to that front space. Not into where we are creating a distribution space for them.” This is a story that is continuing to develop. For more information, stay tuned to meramecmontage.com.