SCSU’s Eastman Hall Renovation to Wrap Up this Spring [VIDEO]

ST. CLOUD -- Renovations to a building that opened nearly 90 years ago on the campus of St. Cloud State University are going according to plan.

The Eastman Hall project is right on schedule, Phil Moessner is Assistant Vice President for Facility Services. He says they'll be just about finished this spring.

"We started the project back in January, we expect to finish the building portion of it in March. Then outside there's some work, obviously, we need to wait until the weather breaks before we can plant bushes and things like that. So there's some outside work that won't be done until July."

The project is about 75 percent completed but Moessner says no remodel happens without a few hiccups.

"Probably the biggest thing we had was down inside, in the basement area we had a wall collapse that we had been planning on reusing. So it was okay how do we shore things up and then rebuild that wall."

Since the beginning, SCSU has wanted to incorporate as many historical elements from the original Eastman Hall into the new design.

"The original building had a basketball court in it and we've used a lot of the wood from that as part of our decorative elements. We've taken some of the old bleachers, we're going to reuse some of the wood from that as well. Bits and pieces of things that we've found in the building as we're going along, water values, things like that, handles off of those sorts of things that kind of just look cool. We're re-incorporating that into either our history wall that's going to tell the story of the building or in some of the artwork that we're putting in that's going to be a permanent part of the structure."

Eastman Hall is now three levels, it will soon house the School of Health and Human Services, Healthy Huskies and UChoose programs. Services will be making the move into the renovated building this summer.

"And then in August of 2019, we'll do a grand opening and a ribbon cutting, as part of the celebration for the university's sesquicentennial. "

Eastman Hall was originally a gym space. St. Cloud State received $18.5 million in bonding money to fund the project. Talks of a renovation first began in 2008.