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Can DNA tests free ex-Akron captain?
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Cat-loving chihuahua suckles seven abandoned kittens
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Hitchens leads Zips in second-half comeback
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Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster
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Holmgren expresses interest in Browns position
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Kent State blown out in second half, loses to Temple 47-13
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Gameblog: Cavs vs. Philadelphia 76ers
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OSU – Michigan college football rivals meet in Baghdad
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Four area football teams play tonight
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Headed For Disaster
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Will Health Care Reform Pass?
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Health Care Financing Reform: (68) Democrats Secure 60 Votes for Cloture
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Silverdome Potentially SOLD!
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George is looking for a Thanksgiving buffet in Akron.
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Steely Dan Plays "The Royal Scam" at E.J. Thomas Hall
HRLite House:
Colloquium at University of Akron
Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
Future of former oat complex is undecided, but students are enjoying luxuries for now
By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal
Published on Sunday, Jan 13, 2008
From her new, circular dormitory room at the University of Akron, Becky Stanic has a skyline view of East Akron.
''It's like a dream,'' the painting major said with enthusiasm amid a mass of clothing and DVDs that she was moving into her room last week. ''It's so beautiful. Moving over here is a little bit more luxury than I'm used to.''
Stanic is one of the 206 UA students now living at Quaker Square, the shopping, dining, office and hotel complex that UA bought in November for $22.7 million from hotelier Jay Nusbaum.
While the complex has had a storied life as an oatmeal plant and then as a tourist destination, this semester it's starting another chapter — part public facility and part dormitory called Quaker Square Inn.
For more than a quarter-century, Quaker Square's old grain silos have housed an eight-story hotel. Shops, offices Please see
Quaker, A8
Continued from Page A1
and restaurants have been located in an adjoining three-story building.
Under contract with UA, RDA Management of Fairlawn will operate 95 hotel rooms on the four bottom floors of the silos for the next two years. The university agreed to keep those rooms available to the public for that period to give the city an opportunity to secure more hotel space for downtown visitors and tourists.
Quaker Square's stores are staying open and the leases of 16 office tenants are continuing. The pool and fitness center remain open to hotel guests.
UA's office of Dining Services is operating two of the three restaurants for the public and students. The third Quaker Square restaurant, Tavern in the Square, has closed.
Future of complex
Just what the complex will become two years down the road hasn't yet jelled.
With almost 400,000 square feet, Quaker Square is the largest facility at the university.
''For all options, there are space and financial resource issues in the decision-making process,'' John Case, UA vice president for finance and administration, said in an e-mail. ''I do not expect to know what programs may move into Quaker Square until the end of the spring semester.''
One candidate is UA's Hospitality Management program, whose students could get on-the-job training in running a hotel, banquet facilities and restaurants.
There is also plenty of room to build classrooms — some 100,000 square feet in a 210-foot-tall grain elevator known as the ''headhouse'' and at the top of the hotel silos. Neither area has been used since the facility's oatmeal days.
In addition, five offices, with 9,600 square feet, aren't being leased.
Students move
For now, the biggest change at the complex is the dormitory.
Most of its new student residents moved from the four so-called kangaroo residence halls — Joey, Wallaroo, Wallaby and Brown Street — on the other side of campus that the university is demolishing this month to make way for a new stadium. They hauled in their backpacks, bicycles and laundry baskets of clothes last week.
It is a whole new world for them — perhaps more elegant than anything they've been used to.
The hotel lobby is decorated with Quaker Square memorabilia, flowered carpets, big vases stuffed with artificial flowers and work by local artist Don Drumm, including smiling sun faces on the walls near the elevators.
But the real novelty begins in their rooms on the top four floors of the hotel, which UA's Web site is marketing as ''one of the most distinctive residence halls in the nation.'' These 95 rooms are being managed by UA's residence hall office.
UA has filled the rooms with year-old blond wood furniture from the kangaroo dorms and the dark furniture that came with the hotel. The resident student staff members got the full-size four-poster beds from the hotel.
Each dorm room houses two or three students in 452 square feet. Sometimes, the square footage includes a bathroom that cuts into the room like a slice of pie. Sometimes, the bathrooms are tucked in the interstice — the space between the round silos — so that all of the square footage in the bedroom is devoted to living space.
The walls are decorated with artwork; drapes have sheers and black-out liners. The concrete walls are 7 inches thick and the floors are 8 inches thick, so the rooms are soundproof and fireproof.
The bathrooms have marble vanities.
As UA purchased everything in the building, students got extras that normally are never included in residence halls but are frequently provided to hotel guests.
These include amenities like coffee makers, towels, alarm clocks, shower curtains, down comforters, sleeper sofas, lamps, hair dryers, magnifying mirrors, ironing boards, irons and even televisions.
The rooms have balconies, but the sliding doors have been locked so that they open only 4 inches for safety reasons.
The cost for all this is $2,477 per student for the spring semester. The rate at Quaker Square is similar to UA's charges for its older and more modest Gallucci, Bulger and Grant residence halls and much less than the $3,434 charged for single rooms in the Exchange Street Residence Hall.
Thrilled with dorm
When he moved in Wednesday, Brandon Fellows, 19, of Lordstown, was thrilled with his new home. There was a glitch with his card key to get into his room — he still didn't have one, even though it was move-in day — but that was a minor setback.
He chose to live in Quaker Square because his parents stayed there on their honeymoon. When he saw it, he was sold.
Fellows moved in a second TV set so that his could be devoted to games and the hotel's could be reserved for viewing. He rearranged the bunk beds, desks and bedside tables to make space for the many friends he expects to visit — some 12 to 15 in Quaker Square alone and more than 30 others elsewhere on campus.
He appreciated the practical value of having to share a bathroom with only one other guy, as opposed to the five he had lived with in the all-male Brown Street Residence Hall. There, cleanliness apparently was not a priority.
''I won't have to wear flip-flops in the shower,'' he said.
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.
From her new, circular dormitory room at the University of Akron, Becky Stanic has a skyline view of East Akron.
Get the full article here.
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