The Facilities and Construction Department has commissioned engineers to examine the possibility of strengthening the floor in the Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall to make the venue safe for concerts, according to Facilities Director Robert Burns.
Dewick has not hosted concerts since the Fall Rock Show of 2008, featuring Hellogoodbye. The floor started to vibrate when the entire crowd began jumping simultaneously, according to Director of Dining and Business Services Patti Klos.
"The floor was not designed for that," she said. "The floor was designed for hundreds of people to dance on, but not to jump in unison."
Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senator Yulia Korovikov, who chairs the Senate's Administration and Policy Committee, approached Facilities this semester about renovating the floor after hearing student interest in using the venue as a concert space.
An engineer inspected the space a few weeks ago, and Burns expects a preliminary proposal on how to correct the issue, including initial cost estimates, to be submitted sometime in the near future. Facilities will forward the proposal to the Senate but abstain from further consideration of the report until the Senate secures funding for the project, he said.
"Let's say the proposal becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars — we'll give that information to the student government," Burns said. "When there's a commitment made by the student government … then we'll do the full-blown study."
Korovikov expects the costs of any renovation to be high.
"The general concern right now is to see how much it would cost to fix those structural issues," she said. "It will be expensive. There's no doubt that it will be expensive."
Burns said the project's high potential cost stems from the location of Dewick's industrial kitchen, which lies directly beneath the main floor.
"If you have to beef the floor up, this is where it could get costly," he said. "That could interfere with the kitchen, too."
Dining Services would be involved in any future considerations of renovating the floor, Klos said.
"We curate that building. We serve thousands of people a day. We would be involved," she said.
The foundation of the Dewick floor is crumbling, according to Korovikov. Though the floor never appeared to be close to breaking, Klos said that the ban on concerts was taken as a precautionary measure.
"We don't know its limits," Klos said.
Korovikov said that the Medford campus lacks another venue of a similar size to Dewick, which can hold between 200 and 300 people.
The Carzo Cage in Cousens Gymnasium and the Gantcher Center, which were used for Passion Pit and Fall Ball respectively, are far too large for a crowd of 200 to 300 students, Korovikov said, while Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room is too small.
"We don't have many big spaces on this campus that are indoors, at least," she said.
Dewick's size offers a fitting place for a concert space, she said.
"It's the very basic fact that it's a big, open space," she said. "Imagine if you moved all those chairs."
Senior Sarah Habib, co-chair of Programming Board, said the body has been frustrated by Dewick's unavailability, as it uniquely suits a variety of on-campus events.
"The openness, the capacity of Dewick cannot be matched by any university spaces," she said. "We know it's not useable, so we kind of avoid it, but it's definitely a problem."
Dewick, Habib said, is small enough to allow organizers to avoid the extra costs associated with hosting an event in one of the campus's larger venues.
"If we have an event in Gantcher, we're required to pay for more security and more facilities costs just to have the event," she said. "It helps keep costs down because having an event is much cheaper than having an event in the Cage or in Gantcher."
Nicole Goodwin, co-chair of Concert Board, said that after Dewick became unavailable for concerts, Concert Board adjusted by booking bigger shows in larger venues, a move that turned out advantageous for them, she said.
"Out of necessity, we moved to other places, but that ended up being a great step for Concert Board by having bigger shows and doing things like Passion Pit in the Cage," she said.
Goodwin does not see the inability to use Dewick as a major problem for Concert Board, explaining that she prefers larger-scale concerts hosted in the Cage and Gantcher, which can be open to more students.
"As Concert Board, what we want to do is have bigger shows and have shows that everyone at Tufts can get excited about, along the lines of Spring Fling," she said. "At this point, if Concert Board can do shows for 2,000 people, why would we want to do shows for 200 people in Dewick?"
Klos emphasized that Dewick can currently host any kind of campus event besides concerts.
"You can have lectures, you can have the kinds of events where the audience is not likely to want to jump in unison," she said. "Certain kinds of events don't lend themselves to that."
Students should not worry about the sturdiness of the floor for tame events hosted in the dining hall, she said.
"Going to eat is not an issue," Klos said.
