As an alumni, as well as current graduate student of Western Michigan University, I believe it is an absolute shame that the beautiful buildings of Historic East Campus continue to sit dormant and waste away while new buildings are constantly being constructed on West Campus.
I would like to see the university consider renovating the buildings of Historic East Campus for classroom use and for housing students.
I am aware that it is not possible for all of them to be renovated all at once, but I see no reason why the buildings cannot be renovated one at a time.
I appreciate the design of the proposed new apartments and how they were modeled after Vandercook Hall, as to “have the feel of a 100-year-old academic institution.”
To that, though, I must say that we are a “100-year-old academic institution” and we have the buildings on Historic East Campus to prove it.
Fixing up Historic East Campus and actually using it would give Western Michigan University the real “feel of a 100-year old academic institution.”
Brenden P. Boudreau
WMU Graduate Student
About afox
I just recently asked about this at the WMU Master Plan meeting. The answer i was given was that for the same price to build the new apartments they could probably have renovated (i believe he said Vandercook). The problem is that they would have 1/3 the rooms available about 100 compared to a little over 300 if i remember the Apartment presentation. This means that it would take 3x as long to pay off the the renovation. The money going to build the apartments is from bonds they plan on selling (again if i remember the apartment presentation at the WSA meeting) and im not sure how the whole bond thing would work out with it taking 3 times longer to pay off. The good thing is that the apartments will be paid for outside of university funds but the sad thing is that East Campus is still not being used…