This week, three college-owned homes on Union Street were demolished to make way for eight new tennis courts, according to Chief Administrative Officer Rich Péwé. In total, five houses on the street will be demolished. Péwé said he does not know yet when the courts will be completed.
He said the college has been planning to build the courts for a while, but the funding just recently became available.
Péwé said Hillsdale currently has six tennis courts which are in need of repair, and they are also adding a men’s tennis team this fall. Those two factors, coupled with the donation, allowed the college to begin preparations for the new courts.
With the new courts going in on Union Street, eventually the old courts will be removed and replaced with a turf building, Péwé said.
“I hadn’t been putting much money into the houses on Union Street because I knew they would be coming down,” Péwé said.
He said he had informed the deans that the houses would likely be removed soon, but since the tennis court funding was not available in the spring, the deans went forward with filling the houses for the 2014-2015 school year.
“It would have been better if this happened in the spring, but that’s just not the way it worked out,” Péwé said.
Instead, the funding came in only a week before the college informed students about the demolition. Assistant Dean of Women Rebekah Dell went right to work finding new housing for the students who had planned to live in the three Union Street houses.
“This is an exciting development for the college,” Dell said. “We found out late in the game, but we are partnering very closely with those students and it is going very well.”
She said that only three of the five houses were occupied, one of which was the SAI house. The demolition will displace 12 students total.
Junior Kadence Ribbens, who lives in the SAI house, said she heard on Facebook that one of the other houses on the street, called “Rivendell,” was being demolished. It was the following day that SAI house director, Ellie Loderman, and Ribbens found out the SAI house would also be torn down.
Both Péwé and Dell confirmed that the SAI girls will get a new house, although the college has yet to close on a property it is currently hoping to purchase. The other students may need to move into the Suites.
Péwé said they are doing everything they can to help the transition, including hiring on-campus students to help move the personal belongings stored in each of the occupied houses. Dell said the students’ items have now been placed in storage.
“The house for SAI is much better than the house [that was torn down],” Péwé said regarding the new house.
Despite the college’s best efforts, the displaced students had mixed feelings about the change.
Junior Chris McCaffery said he had stored personal items in the SAI attic after being invited to do so by some of the girls in the house.
“I simply made the mistake of assuming that buildings that were standing in May would be standing in August,” McCaffery said. “Generally I just think it was very inconsiderate. I just do not think a donation should ever be worth that kind of continued confusion.”
Ribbens said she wished they had more than five days’ notice regarding the demolition. She said the process was chaotic and scary, but in the end she thought the college did the best they could to accommodate them.
“They found us a better house,” Ribbens said. “We just had a lot of sentiment in that old house. It is hard to see the pictures of it demolished. Five days is not enough when your house means something to you.”
