NEWS from
CENTENARY COLLEGE OF LOUISIANA

$2.4 Million Renovation of Rotary Hall Brings Apartment-Style Living,
New Conference Space To Centenary Campus

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (2/97)
Contact: Lynn Stewart, Centenary News Service,
318-869-5120 or 869-5709

SHREVEPORT, LA -- Centenary's oldest residence hall will become its newest once again when it opens in the Fall of1997. Formerly Rotary Hall, a men's dormitory, it is now Rotary Suites, sporting three floors of apartment-style suites, an attic with studio apartments and a ground floor with adaptable conference facilities.

"We are pleased to be able to offer our students an additional housing option on campus," said Centenary President Kenneth L. Schwab.

Most of the facility will contain two-bedroom, two-bath apartments that include generous living and kitchenette areas that are entered from an exterior balcony. Balconies overlook a central exterior patio that can be used for informal social gatherings next to the college's expanding arboretum.

Other amenities include new and updated finishes throughout the building and laundry rooms on each floor. The technology available in each apartment includes prewiring for television, computer and telephone lines. There are two computer/telephone stations per bedroom area and one in the living area. This will allow students the full range of computer, Internet and on-campus networking capabilities that are needed in today's college environment.

For those students who desire a more solitary living arrangement, one-bedroom, one-bath apartments are available as are three single-occupancy attic loft efficiency apartments. These lofts feature open heavy timbers and wood decking of the original building. The technological capabilities available in the two-bedroom apartments will also be available to the loft apartments.

The facility will be open to male and female students, although individual apartments and suites will have either all-male or all-female residents.

The ground floor will comprise a common lobby and conference center encompassing five separate meeting rooms. These rooms incorporate the new technology available in the student living areas, including prewiring for current and future learning technologies.

Two of the meeting rooms will have a common movable partition, allowing the rooms to open together for larger conferences. This area has been purposely designed to allow the greatest degree of flexibility in use and numbers of people. These conference areas will be available for school and community functions, as well as local and out-of-town organizations.

The new Rotary International Suites will be an aesthetic and technological model that will lead Centenary and its students into the 21st Century.

The $2.4 million renovation project is a part of an overall $7 million bond project during the coming year which will allow a number of campus projects, including heating and air conditioning improvements, new residence hall furniture, a bus and van, various lighting projects, and a library networking system.

Rotary Hall was presented to the college by the Rotary Club of Shreveport in 1930. It originally consisted of 36 rooms, a guest room and reception area and matron's quarters. Like most dormitories constructed during this time, it had a central corridor on each floor with stairways at each end. Each bedroom had its own lavatory, but shared a central toilet/shower area located on each floor.

A 32-room annex on the south end of the dormitory was completed in 1954, and in 1963, the original building was completely remodeled by the college. On the building's 50th anniversary, an endowed maintenance fund was established for the building and the lobby of the 1930 wing was renovated.

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