The Memorial Union renovations are set to begin on April 19 and as students wander through the union, they may have noticed that some remodeling is already underway.

“Right now everything is on schedule,” said Dave Hendricks, director of the Memorial Union.

The final plans will be discussed with the architects on Feb. 24 and from there, the Board of Regents will have to sign off before the project can begin.

“They have to approve the bond resolution,” said Raymond Hauke, vice president of administration and fiscal affairs. “They could reject it, but they typically don’t.”

The student fee that was approved last spring by a student vote will go toward payments to the bonds every semester for about 20 years.

“It would be up to them whether they wanted to roll back the fees or go into some other renovation,” Hauke said.

With the state of the economy, the actual amounts for construction are projected to be under budget, meaning there could be money left over.

“The bidding climate continues to be positive in our favor in that things are coming in low,” Hendricks said. “We fully expect that the project will be less than the budget.”

Extra money would go towards renovating the third floor of the union and possibly new furniture for areas like the cafeteria, where new furniture wasn’t originally budgeted.

“New lounge furniture is the highest priority in my mind,” Hendricks said. “Then we can move to the cafeteria, in my opinion.”

The east side of the union will be shut down in April, with the Information Desk moving to the west entrance across from the cafeteria and Conference and Scheduling moving downstairs.

“We’ve relocated the ID office,” Hendricks said. “And we are in the process of finishing up work in the old ID office, which will become the Hornet Express.”

Many students may be wondering why the Hornet Express was remodeled less than two years ago if it would be torn down now.

“What we did in there was market research,” Hendricks said. “One of our goals was to get food on two levels. We didn’t have any data to prove that that was a good move. We put almost $20,000 into that space knowing that it was going to be torn down in a few years. The first year, the Hx outsold the (Hornet’s Nest and the convenience store) by $158,000. We learned several things: location and we didn’t have enough. We need to have at least one other food retail area. We’ve created a pizza/pasta place that will be in the west lobby. It seems silly but going in we knew that was the plan.”

Most of the relocations will be done over Spring Break.

“Either during or right after Spring Break we are going to start some demolition on the east side of the building to tear out the current Hornet Express to get a jump start on the project,” Hendricks said.

In the beginning of July, the bookstore will move downstairs to the Heritage Room.

“At that point the east side will be completely closed down,” Hendricks said. “One of the very first thing that we will see is the building of the (east) addition. That will be online, hopefully, by Christmas break.”

Students who use the east entrance frequently will be instructed to use the South entrance of the Union.

“We will reroute them to the south side of the union, down the steps to the doors that are right across from the Hx,” Hendricks said.

The north entrance will also be closed.

“Ultimately, we will have a new entrance down into the Hornet’s Nest space,” Hendricks said. “We’ll reroute (them) down to the Hornet’s nest patio and up into the West side.”

The Student Health Center will no longer be in the union and will be relocated to the second floor of South East Morse over Christmas break.

“That allows us to create a wellness center,” Hendricks said. “The hallway that goes east towards the union will be the health center. We wanted both of (the counseling center and the health center) to be in the same area.”

With the addition of the health center in the resident halls, there will be less space for student occupants.

“In terms of impact on students, it’s a loss of about 30 spaces,” said Cass Coughlin, director of residential life. But we are going to take all of South East Morse offline next year and begin renovation work in there. So the whole building would have been shut down any way. We are only about 80 occupancy this year. We have more space than students who are interested in living in the dorms.”

Even SWARM activities to enroll new students will have to be changed.

“There is a complex SWARM plan,” Hendricks said. “The folks that plan SWARM got very creative. It’s going to be a little bit different from previous years.”

However the summer camps that are held annually at ESU will still occur, even with the construction.

“All of the major camps that use Emporia State in the summer time will be back this summer,” Hendricks said. “We felt really good that we have long standing relationships with those camps and they choose to come back.”

With all of the construction, Hendricks asked the university be patient.

“Bear with us,” he said. “There are going to be some challenges for us. The prize at the end of this thing is far greater than inconveniences that we will have to live through to get there.”

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