Annenberg School face-lift to begin soon

Large sections of the Annenberg School for Communication will shut down beginning next month in the first stages of a two-year, $15 million renovation project. The project will renovate the older section of the building and replace the Annenberg School Theater with a teleconferencing center linked to the Annenberg Public Policy Center in Washington, according to Communications Professor Larry Gross. The building's Walnut Street facade will be entirely revamped as well. Graduate students will be the first to see the effects of the renovations, as all graduate offices will move to 4025 Chestnut Street in October. Although they originally expected to move to the graduate towers, most Communications graduate students said the extra distance is not a problem. Several graduate teaching assistants, however, expressed concern about how far their students will have to go for office hours. "It's going to be interesting to tell my students, 'Uh, there's this building on 40th and Chestnut and that's where I am' -- that sounds kind of funky," second-year Communications graduate student Dave Park said. The next stage of renovations will begin in January, forcing the library and the first floor to close. The theater will shut down in May. But Gross said the renovations will have little impact on undergraduates, because the undergraduate classrooms, main offices and faculty offices will remain open for the entire construction period. "Except for the disorienting feeling of having a plywood entrance and the noise -- which we already have from across the street anyhow -- it won't really be that different," Gross said. The loss of the theater will create some difficulties for campus performing arts groups, who will be even more cramped for space. Irvine Auditorium closed earlier this year, and the Houston Hall theater will shut down next fall. The administration, however, has been actively searching for alternative rehearsal and performance space, and recently agreed to lease the Movement Theater International on the 3700 block of Chestnut Street. But when the project is completed, the undergraduate experience should be improved through increased involvement with the Annenberg Public Policy Center in Washington. The renovations will build a "penthouse" structure above the current theater site to house a telecommunications center that will let Communications students participate in lectures given at the Washington center, Gross said. The center already has a primitive telecommunications hook-up with the school, but the broadcast image is not "television quality" and professors need to drag a TV console into their classroom or "futz around" with a computer to use the system, according to the Washington center's director, Douglas Rivlin. When the program is fully operational, the center plans to solicit student requests for speakers and symposia, Rivlin said. "It will be possible to invite the FCC or congressmen or White House officials to come to our office in the National Press Club and speak to a class meeting in Philadelphia," Gross said. "It's a lot easier to get people to go across town than to Philadelphia." Gross said Annenberg won't be greatly inconvenienced by the closing of the theater, since the school only requires an auditorium of that size once every few years -- as it did recently for FCC Chairperson Reed Hundt's speech. The renovation project will also make the school's entrance more visible, since many people have trouble finding the current entrance. Gross said he once found Mayor Ed Rendell wandering around looking for the doorway before a speech he was giving at the school. Additionally, the building's older section -- which was built in the 1960s -- will be brought up to current standards for wheelchair access, while the school's computing facilities, research space and library will also see improvement.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.