The renovations at Parkside College Dining Hall are still “on schedule” and due to be completed on Oct. 21, according to Director of Housing and Residential Life Carol Roberts-Corb.
However, if the dining hall is completed on time, it may not open to residents until November.
The maintenance team renovating Parkside’s dining hall previously extended the project’s completion date from September to October this year.
This delay has limited Parkside residents’ dining options, leaving them to either visit the Hillside College or Beachside College dining halls, or to eat in the temporary “Camp Parkside” dining hall in Parking Lot 16, a five-minute walk away from Parkside.
Since the beginning of the semester, Camp Parkside has been created and operating out of a few modular office trailers in Lot 16, which sits a few minutes away from the Hillside dining hall. The temporary Camp Parkside is equipped with plastic tables and foldable chairs, and residents use disposable dishware.
Although its completion date is set for October, the new dining hall will not open its doors to hungry students that month, according to Roberts-Corb.
“We haven’t set an opening date yet, but it should be in very early November,” Roberts-Corb said. “That is if all continues to go well — you never know with construction.”
Roberts-Corb said that aside from construction, the new dining hall will have to go through other processes before it can open its doors to residents.
“The 49er Shops will need to stock the kitchen and train on the new equipment,” she said. She also said training alone is predicted to take approximately two weeks.
Sophomore nursing major and Parkside resident Alice Park said she is excited for the new dining hall to open.
“The [Camp] Parkside dining hall is too small and gets crowded, but at least it’s only temporary,” Park said. “Hopefully [the new dining hall] will be better than before.”
Some students, like junior mechanical engineering major Joseph Vincent Ralph Williams, said they are looking forward to having metal cutlery again once the new dining hall is up and running.
“It’s very wasteful; there’s no reusable crockery, so there is excessive waste,” Williams said.
Others, like junior business major Lianna Siddick, said the noise from the construction has been an annoyance.
“It wakes me up every morning,” Siddick said. “They need to hurry up and finish the new one.”