Early stages of planning have begun on the expansion and upgrade of the student centre in DCU.
DCU Students’ Union President, Paul Doherty told The College View that they are in the extremely early phase of preparation. “So far we are looking very broadly at all possibilities going forward and there are definitely some exciting developments down the line.”
An expansion and upgrade of the student centre/Hub was included in the DCU strategic plan introduced last year. It aims to “broaden the range of facilities (in the student centre) including new social, cultural and enterprise hubs”.
The Students’ Union held their first implementation meeting for the DCU Strategic plan on January 30th which was chaired by the Deputy President of DCU, Jim Dowling.
After the meeting Doherty said he “would imagine the entire expansion would involve upgrades to the current facility, to the existing building and possible connections with existing buildings within the current perimeters of the Hub”.
The future of the ‘Old bar’, located within the Hub, has been unclear for some time and Doherty admits there are huge possibilities for the space but that developments on that side of the building are a long way away. The Union are also asking students for their opinion on how the new student centre should look and what it should include so they can feed it back to the Campus Development Plan.
The DCU Strategic plan is to be carried out between 2013 and 2017 and the SU President wants to emphasise that they will not be breaking ground any time soon.
“Of course finances are tight and I really want to stress that we are nowhere near building a new student centre. For the time being we are purely looking at what an ideal student centre might look like and what we would like in it. Ideas have ranged from social space to a 24 hour work space and even for a few hammocks”, Doherty said.
Adam Higgins
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