BEMIDJI -- All around this stone-and-brick building, among the vestiges of a past life, are glints of a new one.
The hardwood floors remain from the old basketball court, but have a modern gloss now under white lights. The ticket booths are here, too, looking out at the lobby and its grid of six flat-screen TV monitors. And you might recognize the bleachers, repurposed as walls here inside BSU’s Memorial Hall.
At 75, the building is still reincarnating, at $13 million a pop. It opened to business and accounting students Tuesday as the new home to both programs -- this after a year and a half of renovations that transformed what was a tired gymnasium. (Others remember Memorial Hall as a library.)
“It’s a lot of old and new,” said Shawn Strong, dean for the college of business, technology and communication. “A lot of folks hated to see this done, but once they’ve actually seen it ….”
Along the margins of the building, where students once sat in bleachers and watched John Denver or B.B. King, are classrooms Strong calls state-of-the-art. Some are equipped with TV monitors that can be synced for a lecture -- think mini chalkboards showing the same information -- or used separately during work time. Other rooms have long tables with big rectangular buttons that, if pressed, summon computers that rise slowly out from the table.
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“Everybody will become a business major,” Strong said.
He ducks around a corner and presses another button. This one pulls up a massive door resembling that of a garage. Inside is a meeting space with web-conferencing capabilities. There are two of these garage doors, which can be opened to create one large room.
“We made sure all the space is flexible,” Strong said. “The building was really designed with students in mind.”
Decker Hall, where the business and accounting programs used to be, wasn’t.
The building sat between dorms, away from the school’s cluster of academic buildings. It was poorly lit and had narrow hallways -- Strong spreads his arms to indicate 3 feet -- that made cross traffic difficult. Old dining facilities, he said, don’t make the best school halls.
Work on Memorial is not done.
Outside, landscaping projects started this week, and metal handrails still need to be installed at the top of the main staircase. Inside, patches of drywall are reminders that, not long ago, the building was in no shape for students. Soon, the drywall on Memorial’s west side will be replaced by windows, giving students in their study spots views of Lake Bemidji. (A ribbon-cutting is scheduled for Oct. 2, the Friday of Homecoming.)
“Absolutely,” Karen Snorek, vice president for finance and administration, said when asked if coming to work is more fun now.
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Snorek started her position in July. Strong is beginning his third year. He said the promise of a new building -- a plan then in its infancy -- was powerful incentive when he interviewed at BSU in March 2012.
Now, he reaps the rewards from his third-floor office. He said enrollment in the business and accounting programs can’t help but climb.
“Students shop today,” he said. “This will give us an edge we didn’t have before.”
No offense to John Denver or B.B King.
