In an open letter to the community, President Brian Rosenberg announced last Friday that progress has been made to accelerate major renovation plans for the Macalester Field House and the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center.

“The need for these projects has been discussed for many years, and we have begun to make progress on these fronts,” Rosenberg wrote.

Campus representatives from both projects emphasized that funding for the renovations would be raised entirely outside of the college’s annual budget. Instead, the college will seek donations to fund the projects.

“It’s very important for people to know that it’s not part of the budgeting process,” said Assistant Director of Athletics Vanessa Seljeskog. She added that if an economic downturn results in adecrease in donations, the college will have to delay the projects.

Although both plans are still in the early stages of development, an Athletic Department committee recently selected St. Louis architectural firm Hastings and Chivetta to design the new building. The firm designed Carleton College’s student recreation center, which was finished in 2000 and cost just under $11 million.

“We are very, very excited to be in the preliminary process,” Seljeskog said. “Everything is on the table; everything is being considered. We have a phenomenal wish list right now.”

Seljeskog said the Athletic Department’s plans include a 200-meter indoor track with tennis courts inside the track, a new arena for basketball games and other events that would seat between 2,000 and 2,500 spectators and more space for both recreational and varsity athletes.

According to Seljeskog and Director of Athletics Irv Cross, Field House renovations would alleviate many of the space constraints that individual students and teams experience. Seljeskog and Cross said the constraints are especially bad during February and March, when the overlap of winter and spring sports results in six teams competing for practice space and little open space for recreational use.

Cross said that the Field House was built in 1955, before Title IX gave more athletic opportunities to women. “The facility was built at a time when there was no consideration for women in sports,” he said. “It has been renovated in spots to try to make up for it, but we need to better accommodate the needs of all students.”

Most athletes agreed that space is a major problem in the Field House. “There isn’t enough space for anybody,” cross-country runner Mo Mullikin ’04 said. “Athletes hardly get to work out here, so how is the rest of the student body expected to?”

Eric Nordstrom ’05, a varsity soccer player, said the hours and space availability are not conducive to any activity outside of varsity athletics.

“There should be more space for recreational activities so the student body can use the Field House resources more easily,” he said.

“Mini Band-Aid renovations have not helped,” women’s cross-country Head Coach Jordan Cushing said. “In comparison to other schools, we are far behind. Gustavus, St. Olaf and Carleton have huge athletic-club-feeling places and there is a huge fitness energy there.”

According to Cross, creating a positive fitness-related environment is one of the main objectives for the new building.

“We want to emphasize the idea of a good, healthy lifestyle,” he said. “The mind-body-spirit are important elements of an education at Macalester, and the building we want to put in place will have benefits for all students.”

Hastings and Chivetta visited with students, staff and faculty yesterday and will survey the community’s needs for the renovations. After the survey, the firm will draw a plan which Cross said he hopes to have by May.

“Then we’ll know what it will look like and what it will cost,” he said. “The next question will be how to raise the money.”

Plans to remodel the Fine Arts Center are slightly behind the Field House project.

“By fall, we want to be articulating spatial, pedagogical, technological and teaching needs into a form architectural firms can respond to,” Classics Professor Andy Overman said. Overman is part of a group of faculty advocating renovations for the Fine Arts Center.

The fine arts complex dates back to the 1960s and, according to Overman, is a “very dated space.”

“It’s totally out of space,” he said. “It’s not even clean. Many people feel it’s not even safe.”

Overman emphasized the critical long-term need for a new fine arts complex. “We cannot afford for it not to go through,” he said. “We’ll keep looking until we find people who want to do it. It would be a failure of our mission as a school. It is a big statement about who we are and where we are going.”

Music Department Chair Marjorie Merryman also favors the project. “In the Music Department we’re very excited about the prospect of an enlarged facility that would enhance our programs for students and be a more inviting place for public events, too,” she said.

Cormac Seely ’05 said rebuilding the fine arts complex would be beneficial but not necessary.

“If we consider athletics an important extracurricular activity, then we should consider music and art and theater important, too,” he said. “So when athletics receives a new Field House, serious consideration should be given to renovations on the arts complexes.”

Jessica Fishken-Harkins ’06 said she though major renovations aren’t necessary.

“I think some of the facilities are not good, like the TVs and DVD players in the Humanities Resource Center, but the classrooms are nice and well-equipped,” she said.

Tim Bates ’06, who primarily uses the visual arts section, strongly advocated rebuilding the fine arts complex.

“I feel like the visual arts building has had some heavy use since they built it in the ’60s and it is time for some sort of improvement,” Bates said. “The building is becoming dilapidated—you can see it just by walking down the corridors and looking at the rooms. It’s cramped—the space could be more efficiently used and it would be easier (although probably more costly) to simply rebuild a new structure and start from the ground up.”

“It’s time that we recognize the necessity confronting us for providing the right kind of place and the right type of building,” Overman said. “We’ve got to build a facility that is reflective of the 21st century for an excellent liberal arts school.”