The university is renovating Pulliam Hall by adding an extra floor to help house programs being held in outdated facilities on campus.

The pool and gym facilities in Pulliam Hall have seen little use in the past few years, so the university decided to move the facilities for the School of Art and Design out of the outdated blue barracks on Washington Street and into Pulliam, Kevin Bame, vice chancellor for administration and finance, said. He said the university would also relocate the School of Social Work from Quigley Hall to Pulliam’s new second floor, opening up Quigley Hall for the School of Architecture.

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Bame said the renovations will provide updated facilities for students at the university, such as conference rooms, new offices and studios.

“It definitely is going to benefit all three programs,” he said. “Art design and architecture are held in the blue barracks, and they were originally built as temporary facilities in the seventies, but they have long outlived their usefulness.”

The renovations are part of the $8,250,000 million Structural Steel for the Renovation of Pulliam Hall contract approved by the Board of Trustees in November, and will be completed around July or August 2014, Bame said.

He said university faculty would provide most of the funding for the renovations and faculty members who invest in the renovations will be reimbursed through a maintenance fee.

University spokesman Rod Sievers said the university is looking for any opportunity it can find to give departments more space to work with.

“With all the construction going on around campus, it was nice that we could repurpose Pulliam Hall for the students and faculty,” he said. “The pool and gym were becoming too expensive to maintain, so moving to Pulliam seemed like a natural fit.”

Phil Gatton, director of plant and service operations, said the reason the university decided to move the art and design and architecture programs to Pulliam was because of the lack of use and maintenance problems with the Pulliam gym and pool.

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“We have had some problems with the filtration system for the pool. We also had about $500,000 to $600,000 worth of items that needed repair, so keeping up with maintenance was getting too expensive,” he said. “I know people said we got plenty of use out of the pool and gym, but there was better use for that space.”

Gatton said the move to a newer facility from the blue barracks was long overdue because the barracks were originally made for interim housing after the Old Main building burned down in 1969.

“I can’t think of one person in the programs who is not excited about moving out of the barracks,” he said. “Ever since I started working here, they have had issues with flooding, with animals, with heating, cooling and vandalism. It was about time we moved somewhere more updated.”

Sievers said the renovations to Pulliam will give the art and design and architecture programs the opportunity to showcase their programs, and give students the extra space they need to work on projects.

Gatton said he is excited about the renovations, and cannot wait to see the new facilities the students will have on campus.

“I have been around the university for 25 years, and this was certainly something I wanted to see get done,” he said. “Working at the physical plant, it was a struggle for me to put money into renovating the barracks. It’s nice to put money into something that will be beneficial for the students and the staff.”