Hotung's seating area is scheduled to reopen tomorrow morning, according to Tufts Community Union (TCU) President Neil DiBiase.
But the opening will be a soft one, as custom-made furniture and some glass tiles have yet to arrive. More work will be done over Thanksgiving break, and the grand opening will be at the beginning of next semester.
The renovated area will feature flat-screen televisions and a performance area defined by lights.
The lounge on the campus center's first floor will also contain new media equipment and will reopen on Tuesday or shortly afterwards.
But like the seating area, it will not be finalized until new furniture arrives. The furniture that previously filled the lounge will be used in the interim.
The gaming equipment there will also initially be the same as before, but DiBiase said that if the student body wants to, there is leftover money to change it.
"The advantage of a soft opening is you really get to see how people are going to use the space," he said.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman agreed that soft openings can be advantageous.
"You always want to check out the renovations that you've done and make sure everything is working," he said.
Tuesday's opening will bring a year's worth of construction one step closer to an end.
Renovations to the servery began last fall, and since then students had access to all of Hotung only during the brief interval between the opening of the servery on April 10 and the start of work on the seating area after Commencement.
The seating area was supposed to be completed by September, but after university officials learned that the project would cost more than expected, the renovations were briefly delayed.
Toward the beginning of the year, officials set a November goal for completion, and Tuesday's opening will mean that they have met that benchmark.
While not everything will be finished by this week, TCU Historian Alex Pryor said that delays in furniture delivery were to be expected.
"We were a little bit ambitious in what our hopes at the time were," she said of the initial plans to have everything done by September.
In the meantime, some of the old furniture will stand in for the replacements, as is the case with the first-floor lounge.
Reitman said this situation is not ideal, but is the best practical solution to student desire to see the facility open.
"This is sort of a test opening and it won't have the full feel and the full effects, but it will when we have everything there," he said.
