Smooth move expected at Red Gym

Eight offices packing for transition to new hub of student services

Top: Many historic touches remain despite extensive renovations, including the main entrance, designed for militiamen. Bottom: Visitors look over the Guy Goen Lounge.

Officials expect minimal disruption to campus services as eight offices begin moving to the renovated Red Gym next week.

Completing the $12.75 million restoration of the venerable 19th century armory, tenants began moving Monday. By early November, the center should be fully operational, says Steve Saffian, the assistant dean of students who has overseen the details of the Red Gym project.

Moving the Office of Admissions is the first — and the largest – undertaking. Director of Admissions Robert Seltzer says the move involves 50 workers and about 2,000 boxes at two locations, the A.W. Peterson Building and 432 N. Lake St.

Seltzer says phones will be answered and services provided throughout the move. Signs will be posted at current offices and the Red Gym to direct visitors to the correct location for the help they are seeking. “We’re expecting to be open to the public continually,” Seltzer says. “Our clients will be able to find us.”

In addition to the offices, the new Red Gym contains a public lounge in a newly created mezzanine above the second floor that includes a view of Lake Mendota; a student art gallery; an Infolab; a media room for group presentations; and the multi-purpose On Wisconsin Room, on the site of the old swimming pool on the first floor.

Although renovated for office use, the landmark building’s interior retains many touches of history. The steel trusses arching over the second- floor gymnasium remain, a tribute to the state-of-the-art construction techniques used when the gym went up in 1894; the cream city brick walls of both the Campus Assistance and Visitor Center and the Morgridge Center have been stripped of paint and returned to their natural state; and the wide front stairways remain.