University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville and Shands Jacksonville officials, staff and students celebrated the renovations to the student dorm on Friday, marking the end of a project years in the making.
Students will start moving back in on Monday after staying in hotels since work began in January. Built in 1953, the building is the oldest on campus and dates back to the housing for nurses in the old Duval Medical Center.
“It clearly, clearly needed what’s been done here now,” said Robert C. Nuss, M.D., associate vice president for health affairs and dean of the regional campus, Jacksonville.
Structurally, the three-story brick building needed serious repairs to fix, among other things, the roof, elevator, windows and heating and air conditioning system.
The $3.4 million project also adds modern touches with an exercise room, updated study areas and two student lounges – one with a flat-screen television on the wall.
“I was kind of expecting some new carpet and a fresh coat of paint, but they’ve completely transformed the place,” said Josh Arenth, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Florida. “I’m very excited to come back after seeing what they’ve done.”
Arenth said the new dorm is far better than the old one or the two hotels students had been staying in.
Most students staying in the dorm are third and fourth-year medical students from Gainesville in town doing rotations, along with others studying to be physicians’ assistants. Students can be at the dorm anywhere from two weeks to close to two months at a time over the course of the year.
Last academic year, 88 percent of the students who did rotations were from UF, with the rest from visiting schools.
The student dorm building, which has 35 rooms and space for about 70 students, will continue to share space with the security department on the ground floor and the Florida Poison Information Center on the third floor.
The renovations were engineered by RS&H, the same company that designed the original building six decades ago.
Jonathan Cantor, a senior project manager with RS&H, said while he was excited to work on a project the company originally build, he hesitated to see how it held up over more than 60 years.
“The fact that it was in as good of shape as it was and we could make it energy efficient was a real plus,” Cantor said.
Still, the old dorm always needed something fixed – the water heater, the roof, any number of things.
“It was a constant challenge,” Nuss said.
Not anymore.
Spotting some students in the back, Nuss said, “You guys got it made now, compared with your colleagues a year or two ago.”
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