More construction for Fisher
Yet again, St. John Fisher will begin construction on the new Skalny Welcome Center. The new building is estimated to cost $3.5 to $4 million. Most of it has come from donations.
The Welcome Center will be the new home for the admissions office and to accommodate the increase in student attendance. There will also be a gallery for students and families to view. The Welcome Center serves as the central location for prospective students and incoming students.
“I think it’s a good idea that we’re expanding the campus. Anyone who visits the school has a central location to go to without having to walk around or get lost,” said 21-year-old applied informational technology major Andrew Auriemma.
Auriemma isn’t the only one who sees this expansion as a good way of helping students.
“It will allow the rooms in Kearny and other buildings to be used as classrooms instead of offices, so that would offer us more room to study,” business management major Elizabeth Nagel, 20, said.
Although the expansion is seen as a good thing for the school, students here for more than three years are starting to grow weary of the construction.
In 2003, Ralph C. Wilson Jr. School of Education Building was opened. The Campus Center and Keough Hall dormitory was finished in 2005. In 2006, the Wegmans School of Pharmacy was completed. One year later, the Wegmans School of Nursing was built. Finally, in 2008, the Fay Building was built, and the old Chapel was torn down.
There are more issues than just the constant construction on campus. As more buildings are placed on campus, the less space there is for anything else.
“It’s going to take more parking space. There’s barely any parking space now. Maybe they’ll wise up and add more parking instead of [having] A, B, and C lot,” Auriemma said. “Every year I’ve been here, it’s constantly ‘we’re building, we’re building!’”
Some students, like sociology major Nichole Hazilla, 22, see minor problems with all this construction.
“I don’t feel that it will positively or negatively affect the campus in anyway,” Hazilla said. “It will affect the summer classes and their parking situation, but it won’t really affect the students over [the] next school year because it should be done.”
