The Maugans Alumni Center is expected to be ready for occupancy by spring 2015.
The project involves an extensive renovation of Blackwell Hall’s lower level. Work will include new insulated windows, extending the elevator to the mezzanine level and completing three unfinished seminar rooms on that level, a two-story grand stairway at the new entrance on the building’s south side (facing Graham Hall) and another entrance on its west end, facing Brock Commons. Landscaping will create a greenway stretching from French Hall to Beale Plaza and Wheeler Mall.
On the building’s main level, a new board room is being built in what had been the kitchen of the former dining hall, as well as a warming kitchen, called a “servery,” between that room and Blackwell Ballroom. The ballroom—which was the main dining area of the old dining hall—was renovated in 2009-10.
The Alumni Center construction is made possible by, among other gifts, a $2.5 million bequest from Katharine Allen Maugans ’46, a retired Navy captain and lifelong Longwood supporter who died in 2010.
The work, which began April 1 and is expected to cost about $4 million, is being done by Jamerson-Lewis Construction of Lynchburg.