By Luke Lattanzi | Staff Writer
As the spring semester continues, several construction projects around campus are scheduled for completion, including the Fudge Football Development Center and a recent fire suppression system leak in the Bill Daniel Student Center.
The SUB, primarily the food court, is under minor construction after below-freezing temperatures earlier this week caused a fire suppression pipeline in the building’s attic to freeze.
“The safety of all Baylor stakeholders is of prime importance. Thus, the line will be repaired as soon as possible,” Patrick Carley, associate vice president for facilities and operations, said. “Until it is repaired, rest assured that the fire detection and alarm system is still fully functional throughout the building, and the basement and floors 1-3 still have operational fire suppression systems.”
While the Chick-fil-A is still operational, the Asian Tako is currently closed for repairs.
“We had minor interruptions at Chick-fil-A, mainly in the customer waiting area,” Angie McGregor, director of university operations, said via email. “Asian Tako has been offline since the leak occurred due to needed repairs, with an anticipated reopening later this week.”
On the other side of campus, Henry Howard, associate director of capital projects and championships, said the Fudge Football Development Center remains on schedule to be completed in the summer. Howard said a significant challenge when constructing the facility — the future home of the Baylor football program — has been the site’s tight space.
“We’ve got the Brazos River on the north side of the facility, and so you’re obviously not going to try to build over the river,” Howard said. “So you’re constrained by that physical barrier. So [we were] just making sure that we designed a facility that met the needs of our student-athletes and our coaches within the site that we had.”
Howard said a big focus throughout the project has been designing the facility to maximize the benefit for both coaches and players. To accomplish this, they took multiple trips to other athletic facilities around the country — most specifically the University of Kentucky — for inspiration.
“We went to multiple facilities where we just had seen ourselves in action, where we had heard good things from colleagues that we trusted in the industry,” Howard said. “And so we took their ideas and made them fit within Baylor and made sure that [the facility] met the mission of Baylor.”
Meanwhile, Draper Academic Building is on target for completion in the summer, with the first floor being renovated to serve as a home for the Honors College programs.
“Around 1,400 undergraduates pursuing over 90 different majors trace a path through one or more of our Honors College programs,” Dr. Douglas Henry, dean of the Honors College, said in a previous Lariat article. “Consolidating [Honors College] faculty and staff in Draper, in space designed to facilitate high-quality teaching and mentoring, will help us better serve and support students. When the whole project is complete, the Honors College will have a true home at the heart of campus, one where students easily find, meet and benefit from their faculty and staff.”
