Student Affairs shared plans on opening a corporate Starbucks coffee shop in the Union and redesigning Union Gardens with Ad Hoc Board of Trustees.
Student Affairs representatives met with the Budget Committee and Committee on Academic and Students Affairs to discuss the conceptual plan for the Wyoming Union renovation and student activism on campus. At the budget meeting they requested additional funding for the third renovation of the floor.
“The Wyoming Union and the projects for its renovation are as important for the university and students, as housing and studying facilities on campus,” the Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of students, Sean Blackburn, said.
Student Affairs sees the Union as a place that “creates a sense of community, promotes development, embraces diversity and cultivates the loyalty to the University.”
Among the future of Union renovations, there are projects on preparing space for the Veterans Center on the third floor, the relocation of the Student Media to the basement, providing appropriate space to the Union Administration and Fraternity and Sorority Life Project, moving Rolling Mills and Gallery 234 to the former Interstate Bank space, Campus Visit Program Remodeling and ID Office relocation from the basement of Knight Hall.
The Veteran Center was phase one of the Union renovation plan.
According to the meeting agenda, the third floor of the Union hasn’t been renovated for a long time. The preparation for remodeling was made during the summer of 2017. The plans for the future are to build four new offices, a shared conference room and new restrooms.
“That floor, the third floor, hasn’t seen renovations since 1967,” Blackburn said. “We want to use the chunk of that space to create a high-quality facility. I could tell you that furniture budgeted is not old, but it’s not fancy. It was specifically designed for Veterans Center. For instance, the conference room we are hoping to finish in glass, so that people could see all around, all 360 degrees. The new restroom is another item in our project. We want our students to go to the restroom without need to go to another floor.”
During the Budget Meeting of Board of Trustees, Student Affairs requested an action to allocate additional money for the Veterans Center project.
“Our current desire is to ask for [an] additional $137,000 from the Special Projects Reserve to finish the project and to provide quality that our students deserve,” Blackburn said.
Matt Kibbon, the Deputy Director of Facilities Construction Management, said, “As I looked at the budget breakdown, I can see that all the construction and remodeling expenses are already included. We have a pretty good understanding how much money we need already. From my perspective, that sum for this stage of the project should be adequate.”
The Budget Committee approved the allocation of extra money. However, it proposed to leave money for the Special Projects Reserve for bigger projects.
“We came to overbudget,” John McKinley, the Chairman of Biennium Budget Committee, said. “And now I am looking at Unrestricted Operating Reserve. It seems to me, that it should [be] a place where we could look for funding of this project, because the budget increase is small. We should probably leave the Special Projects Reserve for more significant projects.”
Blackburn said, “We did not make any decision on putting Starbucks in the Union yet. Starbucks is always willing and helpful to send us things for free. We think we could have a square foot for them in the Union.”
Another proposed project was on the renovation of Union Gardens, which is placed in the basement of Union.
“It is old,” Blackburn said. “It’s not something where you want to come and have [a] beer and hamburger. This [is] another area on campus, which needs some improvements to become comfortable. Union Gardens does not make enough money to sustain. So, we charged Dining Services to figure out the way to make it [a] modern and comfortable facility or close it down.
