Trustees approve Ashton design

Ashton Center is going to get a face-lift as early as next spring. The IU Board of Trustees' Facilities Committee voted unanimously Thursday in the Dogwood Room of the Indiana Memorial Union to approve designs for the new center. It is slated to replace Ashton's older buildings, such as Aley and Coulter Halls, which would be demolished to make room for the new dormitory, Bruce Jacobs, vice chancellor of auxiliary services and programs said. The buildings currently inhabited by students, Johnston, Hershey, Mason, Moffat, Vos, Stemple and Weatherly Halls, would be unaffected by the new plan. \nThe new buildings are intended to increase the number of students who remain on campus after their freshman year. \n"The plan is to build the new style of housing to retain students who want to stay on campus," said Patrick Connor, the director of Residential Programs and Services. \nRPS undertook this project in response to market analysis which suggested students wanted to live in housing more like apartments and less like traditional dormitories. The new center would be the first of this new kind of housing on campus, he said.\nThe project, which is slated to begin construction in the next ten to 12 months, still must go through a few phases of approval by the Board of Trustees before it is finalized.\n"We'll get project approval, then they'll approve the removal of the old buildings and the construction of the new buildings," Jacobs said. \nConnor said the projected cost of the project will be $56.5 million, financed through a 20-year bond.\nThe design, presented and drawn-up by Ratio Architects, calls for one six-story center building, featuring classrooms, a conference room and a convenience store. It also calls for multiple four-story residential buildings. The dorms will have an apartment-style floorplan with clusters of four-bedroom units with a shared bathroom. Ratio tried to model the new Ashton Center after some of the buildings in the older parts of campus using what's known as a collegiate Gothic exterior, said Ratio President, Bill Browne.\nResidence Halls Association presidents like the idea of the new Ashton Center, said senior John Palmer, RHA president. He said he has been kept in the loop about the project and in turn has been updating the residence halls' student government.\n"I kind of wish that I was going to be staying in them," Palmer said. "They seem to have done a good job mixing the best parts of campus architecture all in one project."\nAt the committee meeting, the design for the second Multidisciplinary Science Building was also approved. The proposed location would replace a service building on Walnut Grove, between the Geology and Psychology Buildings. Terry Clapacs, the vice president for facilities, said the building is slated to cost $42 million, of which $31.5 million comes from the state bonding authority. The building will be the second erected in response to a request by science faculty for one million more square feet of new space for labs, classrooms and offices.\nThe Committee further approved the construction of the $945,000 Human Biology Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Michael Zennie at mzennie@indiana.edu.