Smith Campus Center: Pomona's Big Dig?

Smith Campus Center: Established '99, $33.1 million and growing

We love Smith Campus Center. It's a beautiful building. It has a fountain, a Sagehen cafe, fireplaces, patios, game rooms, a ballroom, a mailroom, and really, really nice bathrooms. Goodness, it even has a pub in its basement! (And somehow we're the alcoholics.)

Truth be told, we're not entirely impartial. Aditya has spent many an afternoon sleeping like a homeless person on Smith's luscious couches in his C.M.C. sweatshirt.

But have you ever wondered why Story House, C.M.C.'s mailroom, just gives you mail while Pomona's Smith Campus Center seems downright regal?

No, it isn't just because minority radicals burned down the rest of it. Good guess, though!

It's because Pomona's Smith Campus Center cost $18.3 million (23.4 million in today's dollars, assuming the original figure in 1999 dollars).

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

But when the plans were sent out for estimates, the college got an unwelcome surprise — the complex would cost a lot more than Pomona was prepared to spend. College officials sat down with the architects for not one but two rounds of cost cutting that eliminated a number of elements — irrigation for the courtyard, an art gallery, and a pub and most of the other basement features. Even so, the building ended up costing $18.3-million. It opened in 1999 to widespread praise — it was still a very handsome structure — and Pomona's students proceeded to ignore it. In droves.

At 65,000 square feet, it was big — at least for a 1,500-student college — and it was mostly empty. "We had a beautiful building," says Neil Gerard, the building's director, "but not a very functional campus center." To its credit, Pomona was quick to acknowledge that it had made some poor choices (The Chronicle, March 26, 2004).

So what do you do when you spend a lot of money building something that's inefficient? Throw more money at it!

From the article, once more:

Finally the college took a deep breath and decided that little fixes weren't the answer — the Smith Campus Center needed a major overhaul. Another committee was appointed. Gerard says a trustee, A. Redmond Doms (known as Rusty), came to the first meeting with a message from the trustees — think big, and don't worry about the price tag.

"Don't worry about the price tag"? How sustainable! How environmental!

Mark McVay, a principal with the firm, remembers coming to tour the building and talk to students. They suggested visiting the Motley, a student hangout at Scripps College, whose campus is one block north of Pomona's. Instead of the hotel-room pastels and fussy window treatments of the Smith center's parlors, the Motley had what McVay calls "a speakeasy feel."

"Speakeasy"? Weren't those the illegal bars that sprang up during Prohibition?

Gosh golly, we need to start going to the Motley moreoften. What were they putting in McVay's coffee? So that's what organic means. Good to know. I'm beginning to regret that we exposed their anti-free trade practices.

I guess that speakeasy feel explains why they threw in an extra 9.7 million for an extreme makeover renovation even though the building was only eight years old.

Despite its $9.7-million price tag, the renovation didn't solve all of the complex's problems. Gerard is still worried about the cast-stone ornament, which has chipped easily and worn badly. And now that students are using the building more heavily, they're also skateboarding through it in higher numbers and locking bikes to anything they can find, like wooden benches outside the living room. But Gerard would rather have problems like these than have no one in the place at all.

Spoken like a true renovated Sagehen.

If Pomona College students weren't so busy banning trays, Coca-Cola, and its alma mater, it would make sensible decisions.

Just for those of us who like math, 33.1 million dollars was spent on a top notch building. They could have spent that money elsewhere. Assuming that it paid the full cost of $50,000 for all its students, Pomona could have paid for the full tuition of 662 students instead.

That means that 42.76 % of its entire school could have gone to Pomona for one year for free.

They sure got their money's worth.

Charles Johnson
Aditya Bindal