Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411210012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Mays, humanities division chairman at Virginia Western Community College, knew that each day of rain would delay construction on the new building his division had awaited for years.
And, much to his chagrin, it was a rainy spring.
But now, as he sits in his new, spacious burgundy and gray office and stares serenely out of its picture window, he says thoughts of those agonizing months of waiting are a distant memory because the college's humanities building is finally a reality.
The red brick, two-story edifice rises between the old fine-arts building and the business-science building on a grassy knoll overlooking Colonial Avenue. Sunlight pours into the building through its large windows and domed rotunda, and film loops and camera apertures cover the tiles.
"It's very aesthetically arranged," says Mays, who clearly is pleased with the results. "The frustrating part was seeing the building go up and not knowing if we'd be able to get in it before classes started this fall."
They missed that deadline. The $3.2 million building, which will house the fine-arts department, a gymnasium and faculty office space, wasn't ready until late October. But disappointments like that one were nothing new. In fact, they were par for the course.
Informal plans for the new building began around 1984, said Mays. Six years later, the contract was finally ready to be bid on by construction companies, when state funds were frozen. Things didn't get under way again until last year.
That delay turned some faculty members into cynics.
The English department had been in "temporary" offices for about 16 years. When plans were put on hold in 1990, the impending move became a running office joke, said Meredith Poole, an associate professor.
"We got pretty stoic about it," says Poole. "This has been a long time coming."
But it may have been worth the wait.
Poole's office is now a private one with modular furniture and her own phone line. Before, she shared her office with another professor in T105, a trailer behind the new building, and her phone line was shared with three others.
Still, some days she misses the trailer.
"Even though we spent almost as much time answering someone else's calls as we did our own, there was a camaraderie there that this building doesn't have," Poole says. "Some people didn't want to move."
Ken Greek may be one of the only people in the fine-arts deparment who shares Poole's penchant for old facilities.
From the fine-arts department's beginning in the 1970s, it had been housed in what is believed by most experts to be the old Roanoke Poor House. The Poor House was a shelter for the homeless until as late as the 1950s. In 1968, the building was turned over to Virginia Western.
Its history gives some students "the creeps," but Greek finds it intriguing.
"The new facility will be nice, but it won't have the character that this old building does," says Greek, a graphics technician who graduated from Virginia Western in 1978. "You can still see where the partitions were, and there's a dumb waiter in here that people used to ride up and down."
And there are scores of ghost stories.
Thomas Brooks Jr. has been patrolling the campus grounds for 23 years, and he's seen some strange things: lights coming on and off, doors opening and closing, and even some ghosts.
"I don't care how many times you paint the walls, [the spirits] will still be here," Patrolman Brooks says.
Fine-arts associate professor Rudy Hofheinz doesn't buy into the folklore. After 16 years of teaching in the building, he's ready to leave for practical reasons.
"There's a structural post in the center of the classroom that they can't get rid of, and the computer lab is on two floors, so you're constantly up and down the stairs. And heating this place in the winter and cooling it in the summer is a problem," Hofheinz says.
None of that will be a problem in the new building, which has everything, says David Curtis, department chairman.
There's a professional gallery for student and professional showings, a new photography lab, sunlit drawing and painting rooms, a huge computer lab, general classrooms and a permanent community art exhibit.
"The building is absolutely beautiful. The view is stunning. To me it's exhilarating," Curtis said.
A Roanoke architect is drawing up plans for remodeling the old fine- arts building, says college President Charles Downs. He hopes to make room for six new classrooms and several offices.
In addition, the campus police office that was added to the building's porch area will be removed to return the building "to its original facade," says Downs.
The spring semester will mark the beginning of a new era for the fine-arts department and campus police and maintenance. The fine-arts department will move into the new humanities building, and campus police and maintenance will move into the trailers the humanities professors vacate.
That's a change Crystal Cousins is eagerly anticipating.
"The windows cover the whole room," says fine-arts student Cousins. "The bigger windows makes it ideal for painting in the daylight, and I like looking at the works from local artists. ... One day my work may be up there."
Friday night the college and community will celebrate the project's completion at "The Cajun Invasion." Tickets for the event are $50 per person, which includes hors d'oeuvres by Alexander's and music by the Danny Collet & the Louisiana Swamp Cats and William Penn. Call 857-6048 for tickets. Proceeds from the gala will go toward scholarships and faculty development grants.
by CNB