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A renovation and addition to the South Quad residence hall allowed the university to consolidate West Quad dining into one dining hall and café that serves residential and retail customers. The kitchen expansion includes more storage and a commissary.
The University of Michigan's newly renovated South Quad features an all-you-care-to-eat residential facility, a retail operation and an expanded kitchen with a commissary for assembling and packaging to-go foods for campus. Operated by Central Campus Dining, this foodservice operation serves approximately 5,600 students from the South and West Quads, as well as students living in new residence apartments with suites. The operation has the capacity to serve 7,000 students, staff, faculty and visitors in the future.
The renovation represents an important piece of Michigan's "Residential Life Initiative," which focuses on making significant improvements to the quality of residential facilities for students in order to strengthen the connection between living and learning. "Ten years ago the university's visionary leadership team began efforts to integrate the physical environment with academics to support students' personal and intellectual development," says Steve Mangan, director of Michigan Dining within the University of Michigan's Student Life Auxiliaries.
Mangan arrived in xMarch 2014 in the middle of what he calls a "transformative era." South Quad's dining is the fourth dining hall renovation in the past six years and accompanies many residential unit renovations. Mangan created a new dining department that brings 7 residential dining halls, 24 retail markets and cafes and a catering operation under one operational umbrella. He also developed new, required residential plans that provide students with unlimited access to dining halls, and he built cross-functional teams for the all-unionized operation. In addition, Mangan created a director of student engagement position that works with sustainability and community outreach and food programs.
"At the most basic of levels, the design team transformed a dated, underutilized and inefficient facility into a new, state-of-the-art, regional neighborhood dining center that is exceeding expectations in changing the landscape of campus dining and attracting students from all across campus," says Amanda Key, NCTDQ, interior designer, associate, at the architectural and interior design firm SmithGroupJJR.
The design fills a need for a regional neighborhood dining center that provides a more efficient foodservice operation for the university. All...