New residence hall, refurbished dining room welcome students

Students will return to a campus with a new freshman residence hall and a refurbished KOA Dining Hall.

The $17 million, 170-bed freshman-only Livingston Alexander House was dedicated June 15 and will be occupied for the first time starting today.

Alexander House features individual double rooms and shared common areas. Each floor has a men's and women's restroom with private shower stalls and changing cubicles as well as a gender non-specific restroom.

A number of lounges on each floor will accommodate various numbers of students from two large common areas, to smaller group study and presentation rooms and small individual study rooms.

Students will also have a small fitness room available on two floors.

As students gather in common areas and pass each other in the halls on their way to common areas, there will be more opportunities for social interaction.

All resident students on campus will have access to the common areas in Alexander House, giving all students more space to study, gather and work out.

Pitt-Bradford began work on Alexander House last summer after removing a section of town houses built in the 1970s. When all of the work is complete, the net gain will be 38 beds.

Soon after the dedication, two more sections of town houses - Walt Whitman House and Zora Neal Hurston House - were removed, leaving a large lawn between Alexander House, the Howard L. Fesenmyer House and Rice House.

While more and more students have come to live on campus at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford in the past decade, campus dining has kept up with the increased demand.

That's not to say it hasn't been challenging. As five new residence halls opened in the past 11 years, room to work in the kitchen prep and storage areas became increasingly tighter. This summer, the campus undertook a $4.7 million expansion and renovation of the KOA Dining Hall to provide more seating, more prep space, and more efficient freezer and refrigerator space.

As part of the renovation of the 15-year-old dining hall, the campus replaced carpet as well as the industrial dishwasher, cooking hoods, refrigeration and a number of cooking appliances.

The largest visible changes in the dining room will be new areas for salad prep, an expanded pizza area and an additional 50 seats.

Food can now be stored in refrigerators behind the salad prep area, making the salad as fresh as possible. Workers will prep on one side of the salad bar while diners pile up their plates on the other. The new arrangement will also make it easier for workers to keep an eye on when favorite items are running low and replenish them quickly.

Deli items have moved to an expanded area for fresh-baked pizzas, which will give students the option of asking Metz employees to toast sandwiches in the oven. The additional space also provides enough room for a make-your-own pizza station. While sure to be popular with all, the station will allow students with special diets, such as gluten or dairy free, to enjoy pizza as well.

Tables in the new area are certain to be popular since they all include electrical plugs and USB ports for students to charge electrical devices while eating.

The main kitchen area has been gutted. The new kitchen will be safer for workers, with more room to maneuver around those who are actively cooking or cutting.

An expanded area for a new industrial dishwasher will turn dishes over more quickly to go back out into the dining room.

Another area changed to improve workflow is a new delivery door exclusively for food. Food delivery used to share a loading area with mail and supplies for the university's book store, The Panther Shop.

Architects for the project are Maclachlan, Cornelius and Filoni in Pittsburgh. P.J. Dick of Pittsburgh is the general contractor, with regional subcontractors that include Carl E. Swanson & Sons Inc. of Bradford and Hallstrom-Clark Electric Inc. from DuBois.