By Dave O'Brien
Record-Courier staff writer
Kent State University's Art Building needs a facelift. And a new coat of paint. Its heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems are aging and its roof leaks. Every year, the building needs more attention.
However you put it, the Art Building " with the aging Van Deusen Hall on one side and the recently rebuilt Stopher and Johnson residence halls/Honors College on the other " is in need of millions of dollars of work.
KSU President Lester Lefton and the faculty know this. In a recent meeting with KSU's Faculty Senate, Lefton called the art buildings on the regional campuses "beautiful," while the Kent campus Art Building "has been left in disrepair."
"I'm tired of patching it with Band-Aids," he told faculty senators.
The HVAC system in the building wastes energy and needs constant attention, he added.
Fixing the roof could cost between $1 million and $2 million alone, whereas building a new home for KSU's artists might cost the university $3 million, Lefton said.
The split-level Art Building " which also appears to need another coat of paint " was built in 1972. Some of its neighboring buildings, including Oscar Ritchie Hall and Stopher and Johnson halls, already have been renovated or rebuilt in the past few years.
Other academic buildings on campus that often are cited as needing renovation or rehabilitation include Satterfield Hall, home of the English and modern languages departments; Bowman Hall, home of the history, political science, philosophy and justice studies departments; and Van Deusen, home of the College of Technology.
The roof of Satterfield Hall also is scheduled to be replaced, with the project currently under design for work to be completed during summer 2009, according to the Office of the University Architect. Members of KSU's faculty have grumbled about having their classes scheduled there for years.
The buildings Lefton named as being thorns in KSU's side are "not dangerous, but they are run down," he said.
An additional problem? There's no new money for new buildings at KSU in the shrinking state budget.
Ten years ago, the capital improvement appropriation for university buildings in the state's biennial budget was $740 million, Lefton said. This year, it was $413 million.
Another problem is that academic buildings don't create a revenue stream like new residence halls full of students paying thousands of dollars to live in them each year, Lefton said.
In light of this, KSU is considering "all options," he said, and take care of what it currently has for the foreseeable future.
"This is a university that is going to be here for hundreds of years," Lefton said.