Residents of Hamilton College House have reason to smile.
Their dilapidated elevators and timeworn furniture will be replaced by the fall of 2003.
Students who came to Penn hoping to live in one of the University's brand-new dormitories in Hamilton Village, on the other hand, are probably not too happy.
The elevator and furniture upgrades-- along with the other repairs included in the just-approved $26.5 million project to give Hamilton College House a makeover -- represent one small portion of a $380 million plan, drafted in 1998, aimed at giving the campus a serious facelift.
Four years later, much of that plan, like the two to five new dormitories that were to be constructed in Hamilton Village by 2001, remains just a scale model in the lobby of the Facilities and Real Estate office building.
Administrators have previously attributed the sluggishness of the plan's progress to financial difficulties, but they say the high rise renovation plan will not be plagued by such money troubles.
The 1998 goal "did not include the kind of financial planning that we currently undertook to make [the high rise renovation plan] work, so what we have today is much more realistic and a much more doable plan," Vice President for Facilities Services and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik said.
Back in 1998, Executive Vice President John Fry said the money for the massive dorm and dining overhaul would come from a variety of sources, including housing and dining revenue, income from Penn's Sheraton University City hotel, profits from University conference services and money from Trammell Crow Co., which managed Penn's facilities at the time.
Dining services has struggled financially recently, and the University "insourced" its on-campus facilities management from Trammell Crow in 2000.
The $26.5 million for the new plan, on the other hand, will come from an internal capital loan to housing services, according to Blaik.
The new goal, unveiled last week and approved by the Board of Trustees at their winter meeting on Thursday, calls for extensive renovations to Hamilton College House to be made during the next two summers. University administrators plan to renovate Harnwell and Harrison College Houses after Hamilton is completed in the summer of 2003.
The projected cost for the renovation of all three high rises, which will take six summers, is $80 million.
"What has been recently approved is more of an indication of how we'll approach renovations in general," Vice President for Business Services Lee Nunery said. "We have things that we can do that are not as capital-intensive [as the 1998 plan] but nonetheless have as far-reaching an impact."
Many of the elements of the 1998 plan were so capital-intensive that they will not be started any time in the near future.
Among the projects slated for completion before the renovation of the high rises were the demolition of Stouffer College House and Stouffer Dining Hall, the expansion and renovation of 1920 Commons dining hall and the construction of an enclosure between Commons and Harnwell College House.
Even more ambitious was the plan to build between two and five new dormitories in two years. By the time all dorm construction and renovations were to be completed in about 2007, the University was to have created 1,000 new student beds.
Now, the University does not have the funds to build a new dorm, much less five, but administrators still hope to add one or even two -- eventually.
"I don't know that the end goal of adding the 1,000 new beds is completely remote," Nunery said.
Officials are now seeking a naming donor for a new dorm. Once they have someone to put up the cash, they will likely construct a dorm near Hill Field. A second dorm, should the University secure funds for it, would probably be built in Hamilton Village.
As for the plans to renovate all dining facilities, Blaik said everything related to dining has been tabled until after the presentation of the University's latest plan to revive its ailing Dining Services, which should come within the next two months.
Nunery said he does expect to see renovations to the dining halls, but specifics cannot be broached until administrators know the fate of Dining Services.
"There will probably still be some dining hall renovations done, [but we] haven't actually gotten into any hard discussions of what will be done," Nunery said. "What we do ultimately renovate and change will be in context of the programmatic changes we're making."
However, the University did make good on some aspects of the 1998 plan. Renovations on college houses in the Quad will be finished this summer, and Hill Dining Hall was renovated in 1999.
Renovations planned for Hamilton College House include repairing the elevators and replacing the furniture, resealing the building's crumbling concrete facade, installing fire alarms and sprinklers, painting, putting in new windows and converting office space into student activity space. The University will also relandscape Hamilton Village.
But these renovations, extensive though they are, do not represent everything the University planned in 1998 to do for the high rises.
Back when the 1998 plan was rolled out, officials said they would reconfigure the layout of the floors to foster community spirit, in line with the goals of the college house system. The University also intended to upgrade the high rises' heating and air conditioning systems.
The University contemplated adding "skirts" around each of the high rises to create extra space and reduce the wind tunnel in Hamilton Village.
None of these goals is still on the immediate agenda.
The University is "not going to do some of the more bold things that were proposed before," Nunery said.
The floor reconfiguration is being tabled because there is no "clear consensus" on what types of room layouts students want in the high rises, according to Blaik. The air conditioning and heating repairs cannot be made now, either, just in case the University does decide at some point in the future to reconfigure the floor layouts.
"To the extent that the configuration of the rooms in the future will be changed, it doesn't make sense for us to tackle the air conditioning today," Blaik said.
The skirt plan was put on hold due to limited capital, but Blaik said the University can still add extra room around the bases of the high rises if the money and desire to do so are present in the future.
According to the 1998 plan, major projects to be completed while or after the high rises were renovated included construction of a new dining hall on the site of the demolished Stouffer and minor changes to the low-rise dormitories.
