Five functional bathrooms remain open for foreseeable future
All but five bathrooms in the library are seeing renovations over the next year. PHOTO CREDIT: Maddie Bataille | Photo Editor
The Robert L. Carothers Library’s restrooms are now in the midst of a major three-phase renovation that began in July and will be continuing throughout the fall semester.
Celeste DiCesare, a client within the library and Schane Tallardy, the project manager on the Carothers restrooms renovation project, said that the renovations will be completed by the end of the school year.
“It’s a three phase complete bathroom renovation project within the library,” Tallardy said. “Phase one would consist of the bathrooms on the west side of the library and will be done by the end of fall semester. Phase two is for the bathrooms in the twenty-four hour floor, which would be tackled in winter break. Phase three will be the remaining bathrooms in the building. It’s a complete renovation and update,”
According to DiCesare, the bathrooms in the library have been renovated two other times since the building of the library in 1964. The first renovation was in 1976 and the second renovation was done in 1993.
“Everything is going to plan,” Tallardy said. “A four to five year project like this is getting compressed into eighteen months. All the documents have been made public, standard university communications are done to let people know what’s about to happen.”
Illustration courtesy of: Celeste DeCesare
DiCesare said that it was important to the renovation team that students and community members were aware of the possible inconvenience it could cause, sending an email out to the community on Aug. 23.
Most of the heavy and loud demolition work was done during the summer so as to not disturb the general peace of the library. The only major inconvenience would be possibly waiting a bit in line to use the bathroom, according to Tallardy.
DiCesare states that all bathrooms on the east side of the library are available. However, the ones in the west side are currently being worked on. Tallardy discusses that the phasing of the bathroom renovation has many aspects to it, but one of them would be having available bathrooms for the public while others are in the renovation process.
“The goal is to have everything done by fall of 2023,” Tallardy said. “There might be a possibility to get it done before that, but some of the funding gets disbursed by July 2023. Funding for projects is disbursed through certain time periods, that is why it is out of control to finish everything up at an exact date.”
DiCesare said that there shouldn’t be any setbacks in the new construction. However, the project is dependent on the global supply chain, so there could be some setbacks in getting supplies down the line.
“The biggest challenge would be making adjustments as to the planning and then actually taking things apart and seeing how the plumbing looks together,” Tallardy said. “But there haven’t been any major setbacks.”
Tallardy said that the new renovations to the bathroom will be up to modern standards and he predicts that students and faculty will enjoy the new look of the space when it is complete.