ALEXANDER BUCKNAM
Staff Writer
A total of three buildings on campus no longer serve their purpose at SUNY Fredonia: The Andrews Complex, Erie Hall and Jewett Hall.
The Andrews Complex is located next to the campus and community children’s center.
The complex consists of Schulz, Igoe, Hemingway and Hendrix Hall. The Andrews Complex is currently not being used for its purpose of housing students; instead, there is an office, a gym, an aerobic center, a TV station, an eSports lounge and a Visual Arts and New Media Photography lab still being used within the building.
Schulz is where one would find the Wellness Center and the eSports Lounge. Igoe has the Visual Arts and New Media Photography lab. Hemingway has the Aerobic Center and Hendrix is where the Facilities Planning and Environmental Health and Safety offices are as well as the campus student-run TV station.
The complex stopped housing students at different times, according to Alicia Wroblewsk, the program aid for Residence Life. “Schulz and Hemingway went offline in Fall 2023, Igoe went offline in Fall 2022 [and] Hendrix went offline in Fall 2020,” Wroblewsk said.
According to Markus Kessler, the director of facilities planning, this is due to low student enrollment.
The Andrews Complex is not closed forever, and still could stand a chance at reopening if student enrollment continues to rise, according to Kessler.
He also thinks having halls closed is beneficial. “Because we have empty dorms, it gives us the opportunity to work in a dorm and move people to a closed dorm. We don’t have to worry about getting it done in the summer,” Kessler stated.
There also have been rumors that Fredonia is planning on moving out WNYF-TV’s station headquarters, the Wellness Center and other things located in the complex. Owen Wagner, a first-year English major, said, “Yeah, I overheard people mentioning that they are soon moving the TV station out.”
“I think it’s in discussion, it’s not that they are disrupting anything, they are just kinda in an odd spot,” Kessler stated when asked about the rumor.
Erie Hall is located in the middle of the Kirkland dorm complex. It once served as a dining hall and closed down in 2013, according to Kessler. The building was closed because “FSA [the Faculty Student Association] said there wasn’t enough traffic flow to keep it open to serve meal[s],” he said.
Kessler also mentioned it was because of the student population getting low, and “there wasn’t a need for three dining halls.”
But Daniel Laurie, a graduate of the Class of 2002 and a current English lecturer, said this was not true: “It was busy because of where it’s located,” he stated.
There’s an ongoing rumor that Erie Hall closed because of black mold. Morgan Rybak, a graduate of the Class of 2017, said that rumor was a thing when she was a student: “The rumor was it was either black mold or asbestos.”
Kessler said that these are only rumors. “The rumor of black mold is false,” he stated.
He said that Erie Hall is also currently being used for storage.
According to Kessler, there are no plans to reopen Erie Hall as a dining hall, but there are plans to reopen it as something different.
“In our plan, we are currently looking for a different purpose for Erie Hall, but it will be something revolving around the students,” he stated.
Kyle Piscitelli, the resident director of Grissom Hall, thinks it would be amazing to open an animal shelter. “I think it would be beneficial and it can give us the opportunity to open a veterinary program,” he said. “Students could also volunteer to walk the animals. It could also be used for the Health Center. When we had the therapy dog here students loved it. Also, I know people would choose this school if we had dogs; it would be really good marketing.”
Fredonia is starting to look at what would work best for Erie Hall. Over the summer, they are fixing up the courtyard in the Kirkland complex, and they are fixing up the radio behind Erie Hall, and this is helping them decide on what they want to do, according to Kessler.
Jewett Hall was once the science building before the new one was built in 2014. Once the new Science Center was built, Jewett was used as a storage space to house the geoscience and physics departments so they could fix up Houghton Hall, Kessler said.
This was finished in the fall of 2021, which was the last semester that classes were held in Jewett Hall.
Jewett is currently being redesigned as a student service center and should hopefully reopen within the next year, according to Kessler.
“And this includes the registrar, financial aid, student accounts, career and development and academic advising all on the first floor, and on the second floor would be honors, international education: English as a second language, international services, EDP [also known as the Educational Opportunity Program] and also adding some classrooms,” Kessler said.
This all relates to the Facilities Master Plan of 2011, which gave the college three options: renovate Jewett Hall, add on a new part to Jewett for student services or demolish Jewett and build a new structure. According to Kessler, “We chose option one because New York State said they will no longer provide funding for new builds or additions, but only reservations.
“The only thing that is needed to start this shift is approval for the architects to go into the construction document phase, and that is where we will lay out the blueprint and finish up contracts, and then we go into construction,” Kessler said.
