Yesterday afternoon, the University in conjunction with GUSA announced that Fritz Brogan (COL ’07) will be the manager for the new pub in New South Student Center. Brogan owns the popular student bar Mason Inn in Glover Park and belongs to a family with strong ties to the University.

19 different pub and restaurant providers were solicited for consideration for managing the pub, and the list was narrowed down by a group of administrators and students before Brogan was selected.

“Students were loud and clear that we want someone that understands what it’s like to be a student, what our needs are, how we want to make this place our own. Fritz, having been an incredibly involved student while he was here … and has been a strong alum … it really made sense for us,” said Chief Business Officer for University Services Debbie Morey. “We couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”

The design and atmosphere of the bar have not been decided on yet. While the bar will incorporate television screens for watching sporting events, Brogan will establish a design once he receives sufficient input from students.

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GUSA leaders came to an agreement with the administration Thursday regarding the planned pub in the New South Student Center.

GUSA President Clara Gustafson and Vice President Vail Kohnert-Yount signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Dr. Todd Olson, vice president for student affairs, to ensure the pub will serve students’ interests (e.g. that it won’t turn into an Epicurean-like business).

The new campus bar will serve beer, wine, and liquor on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights and will include 18+ nights or a system of wristbands for underage students, according to the agreement. The vendor will also be required to hire Georgetown students for part-time positions in addition to creating a committee to guide the business.

“The pub vendor will form a committee, comprised of students, members of Students Affairs, a member of GUSA, and a member from the University Services, and pub vendor, to provide input on menu, food and drink selection, student programming, and advertising of the pub,” Gustafson said.

Gustafson said these requirements are a “real-time” way for students to provide input and will help the pub become a student hot spot rather than another on-campus business overrun by professionals. She believes the accessibility for underage students and its location in the NSSC will help designate the pub as a student-oriented business.

“We are confident [the location] will be a new hub of student life for underclassmen and upperclassmen alike, [and] will draw more students to the space,” Gustafson said.

The pub has been part of the plan for the NSSC since the 2010-2011 school year. This proposal was presented shortly after students and alumni launched a campaign to bring back the Healy Pub. The pub, which opened in 1974 and closed in the 1994-1995 school year, had operated in the Healy basement, but President John DeGioia‘s administration tabled the idea of re-opening the establishment in that location. Students then opted for the possibility of NSSC space.

According to Gustafson, GUSA is already pushing for the ability to pay with GOCards. Vox is just excited that she’ll be 21 by the time the bar actually opens in the 2014-2015 school year (ideally).

Read the full letter after the jump!

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Yesterday evening, Georgetown University Student Association hosted a town hall meeting between students, the architectural firm ikon 5, and administrators to see the preliminary drawings and concepts of the New South Student Center. ikon 5 stated that the goal for completion is the fall of 2014.

Although not a final plan, the drawings showed an 11,500 sq ft ‘living room’, with a bar at one end, broken up into three sections by clusters of small study spaces. Adjoining the living room will be a smoothie and coffee shop run by the Corp. The pathway behind New South which leads past Riverside Lounge and into Village A is to become a terrace. A ballroom dining able to seat 150 for dinner and 360 for a presentation is part of the plan.

Some students raised concerns about where student groups using space in New South, especially the storage areas, would be relocated. Todd Olson, Vice President of Student Affairs, addressed these concerns by reiterating that it’s too early to be bringing up questions.

“From the start of the feasibility study there was an acknowledgement this is a serious need in a lot of ways as one we need to keep improving on,” Olson said. “But doing that right in this building would pretty quickly squelch the hope for this to be a living room.”

Also in response to this concern, GUSA President Clara Gustafson (SFS ‘13) said: “We wanted to make sure that this didn’t become a Leavey Center.”

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While the majority of the student body drained off-campus soon after final exams were finished last May, a certain duo were just getting into the swing of things. GUSA President Clara Gustafson (SFS’13) and vice president Vail Kohnert-Yount (SFS’13) spent the summer hard at work on developing the Campus Plan and other aspects of their campaign to make the campus a more welcoming space for students.

Despite the numerous challenges over the past year to create a Campus Plan that appealed to students, administration, and neighbors, Gustafson and Kohnert-Yount insisted that the revamped agreement over the summer “allowed more leverage in certain areas to create change in terms of student conduct, which will hopefully be one of the big focuses this year.”

Working on plans for the New South Student Center was one of their major priorities, as they met with architects to create a floor plan with the promise of an ideal gathering space. Emphasizing the need to “stay vigilant and involved with the design process,” the GUSA executive brought up ideas that would have staying power with students of all ages.

The concept of a terrace that extended from the pub out onto the Potomac for students of drinking age was one of those ideas, though “there was some resistance to that from the administration.” Persisting for the implementation of the terrace, however, the two stressed the “need to have something unique” for older students so they don’t just stick with the Tombs staple. For the younger demographic, the GUSA executive suggested having 18-plus nights so everyone can benefit from the communal space. Overall, the vision for a student center that “reflected the character of Georgetown” was the primary issue in meetings with architects that enabled student feedback.

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Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Senate passed the Act to Create A Referendum Regarding The Student Activities Fee and Endowment, which creates a referendum for the student body to vote on whether or not to spend the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment on the Georgetown Energy’s solar panel and revolving green fund project, the New South Student Center plan, and the Social Innovation and Public Service fund, respectively. [The first two parts of the saga can be read here (I) and here (II).]

The senate approval process was held in two-parts: on Saturday, the senate convened to ask questions of representatives of the two proposals, and on Sunday, the senate passed the bill.

Some Georgetown Energy Clarifications

On Saturday, only Georgetown Energy and Taylor Price (MSB ’11, MPS ’12), author of the NSSC proposal, presented, since SIPS had already presented to the full senate.

Georgetown Energy co-founder Anthony Conyers (COL ’12) detailed the proposal’s rationale. GE originally requested $163,000 to cover only the costs of leasing the panels, and the $300,000 GE presented last week reflected the other costs of the project.

Conyers also clarified that only nine townhouses have the appropriate roofs for solar panel installation, but two of the houses may not have enough exposure to the sun. VP for facilities and student housing Karen Frank told GE that facilities doesn’t have the money to replace the roofs on the remaining townhouses.

Conyers also addressed the challenges to authorship the project received on Tuesday. Georgetown Energy and The Fund (the challenging group) reached an agreement wherein The Fund would drop all challenges and endorse the project. Still, Conyers said he has documentation that GE had been working on the revolving green fund before talking to The Fund.

Read about NSSC after the break

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Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee met once again to finalize the referendum for the proposed uses of the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment. [Here's a recap of the first part of the meeting.]

The allocations are as follows (the draft referendum is reproduced below):

• Georgetown Energy’s solar panels and revolving green fund: $250,000
• New South Student Center: $2,048,412. This will fund the southern terrace and the first floor renovation with an additional $206,763 of interest earned on the account.
• SIPS fund: $1,250,000 plus the any additional interest after NSSC is fully funded.

Here’s the rationale the comittee provided on each proposal.

Georgetown Energy

The issue was whether to fund it at the original request of $163,398, which the endowment commission recommended, or at $300,000, which Georgetown Energy requested in their latest proposal.

According to Georgetown Energy, they found that the original $163,000 requested wasn’t feasible because, “Facilities is great at finding things they don’t want to pay for.” That amount would be insufficient for all 43 townhouses, and that’s not considering the revolving green fund.

As a whole, the committee, like the endowment commission before them, had no qualms with funding GE. More so, their only issue from Tuesday, GE’s relationship with SIPS, was clarified in an additional attachment, which clarified how the revolving green fund would exist should SIPS either fail the referendum or run out of money.

The committee decided on $250,000 as a half-way point between the two numbers.

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Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee met to review the final drafts of the proposed uses of the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment. Starting last night but continuing tonight, Finapp will decide how much of the $3.5 million to allocate to each of the three proposals (the Social Innovation and Public Service fund, the New South Student Center, and the Georgetown Energy solar panel project) and will draft the referendum that will be put to the student body in late January.

This discussion is the almost-culmination of last year’s SAFE reform that declared the endowment defunct and the resulting endowment commission that recommended the uses for the money. The commission’s primary recomendations were for $170,000 to Georgetown Energy and $3.2 million to Healy Pub, but with the premature demise of Healy Pub, a chunk of money is left for the secondary recommendations, SIPS and NSSC. Let’s break down the proposals (actual proposals are at the end):

Georgetown Energy solar panels and revolving green fund

Originally, Georgetown Energy pitched installing solar panels on 43 university owned townhouses through a private developer. This project, besides promoting sustainable energy, would channel the profits made from selling the energy back to Pepco into the GUSA Fund. They originally requested approximately $163,000 with the promise that in 20 years, the solar panels would be turning over true profits.

However, Georgetown Energy ran into some trouble. Anticipating rises in prices stemming from things like the university not having a map of the electricity meters on townhouses, the group is now requesting $300,000. As a bigger problem, the university recently told the group that most of the townhouse roofs can’t support solar panels without renovation, which the university doesn’t have the resources for.

In lieu of placing all the solar panels on the townhouses at once, Georgetown Energy proposed installing solar panels on the seven ready-to-go townhouses and then the creation of a “revolving green fund” for the leftover money. This fund would be a separate pot of money under the purview of SIPS [we'll get to the details later], and it would fund either the latest technology of solar panels or student driven eco-friendly projects [similar to SIPS, but again, more on that later].

And one more catch: a group of students, namely Evan Abrams (SFS ’12) and Tyler Eldridge (COL ’13), claim that they came up with the revolving green fund plan and that Georgetown Energy took the idea, Social Network style. The representatives from Georgetown Energy deny any such thievery, and Finapp chair Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) said the issue has little bearing on the comittee’s job of drafting a referendum.

Overall, the committee members unanymously approved of the solar panel project in its current iteration, but some members expressed some uncertainty about their partnership with SIPS.

The other two projects are after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, University Architect Amy Sanderson led Vox and Chris Pigott (COL ’13) of GUSA through the area that will one day become New South Student Center.

The space below New South began as an undergraduate cafeteria (there was another on the ground floor of Darnall). After Leo’s was opened in the early 2000′s, the University shuttered it. The front dining area became what is now Riverside Lounge.

Below you can follow the tour through the space as it appears today. Bear with us, it’s a little chopped up and confusing.

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[Editor's Note: The pictures in the slide show are meant to demonstrate potential uses for the space, not the interior design.]

Last Wednesday, Administrators held a forum with student leaders to discuss plans for the planned New South Student Center. Several students at the meeting took issue with the hallway-like layout and limited functionality of proposed club spaces.

Erika Cohen-Derr, director of student programs, indicated that CSP would host another forum in about a week to gauge student reactions to the plans. Meanwhile, Vox has obtained a copy of last week’s presentation (see below).

New South Student Center – Draft Proposal

Editor’s Note: We’re trying to get sketch-ups of the New South Student Center. Check back later for an update.

Georgetown administrators held an open meeting yesterday to solicit student input on the proposed New South Student Center. A student center in the area currently occupied by Riverside Lounge has been in the works for almost a decade.

The project would be finished by fall 2014, at the earliest. Administrators expect to cover the estimated $15 million bill using money from this fall’s capital campaign. Bill Ash of the Smith Group, the architecture firm contracted for the project, presented a proposal for the center based on feedback from the 1999 and 2010 Reports on Student Space and a 2004 feasibility study.

Student consumerism

In that vein, Ash developed his plan around the idea of “student consumerism.” He explained this to mean that “you [students] want access to a variety of different things” in a one-stop shop of student services.

Alex Pon (COL ’12), CEO of the Corp, warned Ash against placing too many vendors in the students center, citing that vendors in Leavey primarily cater to non-students. Meanwhile, Olson and Ash were set on having a restaurant-type business in New South despite alternative, overlapping proposals.

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