By KELLY KULTYS
Over the last few years, Fordham has been attempting to meet the needs of its growing student population. With the help of the Excelsior campaign, the university added new residence halls at Rose Hill and Lincoln Center, the new home for the business school and the law school at Lincoln Center.
Hughes Hall was added to campus as a part of the Excelsior Ever Upward Campaign. (By Kelly Kultys)
Still, according to Marco Valera, vice president of Facilities Operations, his department has a few smaller renovations to complete. Currently the list includes improvements to the science labs, renovations to the church roofs, ADA-accessible additions and updates to the residence halls.
The largest improvement on the list will be adding air conditioning units to Walsh Hall.
“We’re going to try this summer to replace all the windows – it’s going to be close,” Valera said. “And then after we have the windows in – it may not be this year maybe later in 15 or early in 16, we’ll be putting air conditioning in there.”
Walsh Hall is one of the few residential buildings on Fordham’s campus without air conditioning units.
However, one of the areas that was not specifically addressed is the crowded fitness facilities. This past summer, the university closed the Lombardi fitness center, which previously housed cardio and weightlifting equipment.
Nevin Kulangara, GSB’15, and United Student Government executive president, called the current space “inadequate.”
The current weightlifting area features just 4 benches and 2 racks for the entire student population. (By Kelly Kultys)
“As versatile as [the RamFit center] is, it just isn’t big enough, especially the free weights section,” Kulangara said. “I noticed as a student that it was almost dangerous working out in that free weights space. People were literally elbow to elbow trying to lift weights.”
Sarah Bickford, who is in charge of the RamFit Center, said it can be hard to judge how intensely the fitness facility is used because its usages varies with students’ schedules.
At certain times of day, all the machines at the RamFit Center will be in use. (By Kelly Kultys)
Still, she admitted there are times when the facility is noticeably more crowded. “Generally, the busiest times are 11am-2pm and around 3-4pm on into the evening hours,” Bickford said in an email. “The less crowded times are: 6am-11am and 10pm-12am.”
Fordham Athletics is planning to open an auxiliary weight-lifting area near where the old Lombardi center was, but those plans were originally delayed until January.
Besides the fitness center however, one area that Kulangara and Valera have expressed interest in is making the campus more ADA-accessible.
Valera says there will be more accessible doors added to campus soon. (By Kelly Kultys)
“We’re adding ADA entrance doors,” Valera said. “We have a program for multi-years primarily at Rose Hill. Next year we’ll probably add about five operating devices.”
Kulangara and USG however, have been pushing for the renovation of Collins Hall for it to include an elevator.
“We’re talking about basically the only facility on campus where groups like Mimes and Mummers can really perform using a full set of props and everything like that,” Kulangara explained. “At the same time it’s a building that is just closed off to a certain portion of the student body.”
Collins Hall houses the main theater on campus but is not ADA accessible. (By Kelly Kultys)
Kulangara acknowledged that this would be a very expensive project, but emphasized that it was one that would be worth it.
“A prospective wheel-chaired student came up to us and said ‘I’m really interested in theater, you know what are my options here,'” Kulangara said. “And we couldn’t lie to her, we couldn’t have her come to Fordham hoping that she could get involved in theater and then have her find out she can’t. So we had to tell her, you can definitely get involved in the writing process, but when it comes to acting or stage props or whatever you want to do, there are going to be a lot of limitations for you.”
Valera said his department is currently looking doing a study to see exactly how much that addition would cost.
There are discussions to revamp the student center at Fordham. (By Kelly Kultys)
But, in terms of large scale campus renovations, Valera said that there are not many planned for Rose Hill, despite the fact they are looking into ideas for the McGinley Center in the future.
Valera emphasized however, that these are just ideas, not a reality.
“We’ll never build that – it’s really conceptual,” Valera said about the proposed re-design by Sasaki. “We really liked their presentation it includes the architectural elements of this campus, a little stone, a little modern glass . It spoke to us when we saw Sasaki’s rendering, but it’s really just being used for development purposes at this point.”
Kelly Kultys 