Western Carolina University has big plans for the Brown Building. It will be the new food services and dining facility that will also house some residential living administration, include an outdoor fire pit and indoor fireplace and student support activities.
WCU administrators are hoping the building to be open for use in spring 2017, but it is a expensive project and the students will pay for it through fees.
The current state of what Brown Building looks like now.
Photo taken by Darren Blackwell
“The way Brown is going to be designed, is a different kind of serving style model. There’s going to be what’s called a servery, and this servery will basically be where all the stations are setup, and you will swipe to go in this big room where all the food is being served, and you’ll get a big plate, a whopper,” said Keith Corzine, assistant vice chancellor for campus services.
Just like the Courtyard dining hall, students should expect to have dining services and a C-Store, but when it comes to the retail, the Brown Building will have another Starbucks and Steak and Shake.
Vice Chancellor for Campus Services Keith Corzine talking about Brown Building.
Photo taken by Darren Blackwell
Yes, the plan is to bring a Steak and Shake to campus! Even though there is already a Starbucks in the Courtyard, this one won’t just be selling pastries, but also sandwiches. The students will have a salad bar, a smokehouse and even a Mediterranean food station are just some of a few stations among many others that are being considered.
“The value of an additional dining hall on campus is just a tremendous step forward,” Corzine said. Hopefully this will bring shorter waiting lines and more options for growing WCU student body.
Vice chancellor of Administration and Finance Mike Byers, explained how WCU plans to pay for it.
“Some facilities like the classroom building they’re built by the taxpayers of North Carolina, they’re paid for by the taxpayers, so no one is borrowing money. When we build these buildings for food and for housing and other functions that don’t get money from the state, we have to borrow money just like you and I would to build a house or buy a house and then we pay the debt off, we pay that mortgage payment with the dollars that come in from selling cheeseburgers, or from rent on those housing facilities.”
He continued on to explain the importance of refinancing.
“We have a number of loans for different housing facilities we built, dining facilities that was built, other student services buildings that aren’t tuition support, and you go back years and years for when you got those mortgages that issue the debt, and so refinancing sometimes when you’re going to borrow money like we are going to borrow money for the Brown renovation, you go look at some of your older debt, and you say well if we borrow enough to renovate Brown and enough to pay off that debt today’s interest rate is lower than this one, this one, this one, so we’re going to borrow enough to refinance those older debts at a lower rate, so we save money.”
Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance Mike Byers talking about the budget for Brown Building.
Photo by Darren Blackwell
The renovation budget for Brown is a $22.5 million project. About $16 million will be deb,t financed to be repaid by dining receipts and a new debt service fee of $136 per year. The University is able to invest $6.5 million of its own funds – $4 million is from the dining services vendor and $2.5 million will be from Housing fund reserves.
This plan was approved during the last UNC Board of Trustees meeting.
Although WCU plans for Brown to be open in fall of 2016, it is likely it’ll be open in 2017.
“We’re expected to go into the renovation construction portion in the early fall semester probably be in summer, August or September somewhere in there and our goal is to have it complete and reopen in January of 2017,” Byers said.
WCU intends for the building to be a productive interaction for students. To see more of the layout of the renovation of the Brown Building click here.
