Aging dorm buildings at UH in disrepair
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
Depending on where you live, the University of Hawai'i dorms are either dismal, decrepit, bug-infested holes or pleasant and convenient oases.
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
Hannah Stave's mother was so disgusted when she came from Oregon, she cleaned everything before letting her daughter move in to her Hale Noelani apartment.
Alexandra Tabas, a UH-Manoa sophomore, talks about the condition of her Hale Noelani dorm. Like several of UH's housing sites, the building is in need of major repairs. Wood braces behind the surfboard help hold up the ceiling.
"The carpets — we don't even walk barefoot on them," said Stave's roommate, Alexis Ornellas. "And things break all the time."
Down the corridor, Alexandra Tabas says cockroaches, ants, flies and the raw wood braces holding up a corner of her living room are upsetting. She hasn't moved out because it's so convenient, she said, but next year she'll find something off campus.
By contrast, Erin Lovely finds her two-person room at Hale Kahawai "nice and quiet" with the leafy courtyard and stunning mountain view.
"It's nice to live up here," said the junior from Seattle. "I love it."
No one is more cognizant of UH's dorm problems — and the disparate conditions of the buildings — than interim housing director Margit Watts. She estimates the 10 dorms providing living quarters for 3,000 UH students need $37 million to $40 million in repairs, maintenance and renovation.
In the wake of the January closure of the Gateway dormitory because of electrical problems, a complete appraisal of all dorms is under way, said Jan Yokota, director of capital projects. The tentative plan is to close one dorm at a time over the next few years and undertake major renovations to each, with students moving into a leased hotel during the interim.
"Many of them are 40 to 50 years old, so we have to look at each one of them, and whether they should be rebuilt or renovated and also in what order," said Yokota. "The most likely first phase are those on Dole Street — Frear, Gateway and Johnson — because they're a group."
Watts, leading a tour of the buildings recently, pointed out scuffed and cracking walls, mattresses in the shuttered Gateway Hall that were covered to contain bugs that had found their way in, leaking ceilings, lamps falling off their moorings, old cracked paint on railings, missing and torn screens, sagging curtains, and an empty, weed-infested barbecue courtyard behind Johnson Hall.
"Look at that," she said, pointing to a series of major scaffolding braces holding up the second-floor walkways at the Hale Noelani apartments.
"We're talking huge problems. We have a building that's dead — Frear — a building that died — Gateway — and furniture that's damaged and broken, buildings long overdue for painting. We need to turn over 90 percent of our mattresses. We've got cement walkways that need to be upgraded to be more Americans with Disabilities Act compatible. Noelani has all its walkways that need to be replaced because of termite damage. And we're still studying how much termite damage is in the buildings."
Shut downs
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
At Hale Kahawai, one of the best of the lot, several second-floor showers have been closed because they're leaking into the first-floor laundry room. Facilities management hasn't yet gotten around to fixing the leaks, which opened up a ragged gash above a rinsing basin.
Margit Watts, director of housing at UH, and Brian Howdeshell, a resident life coordinator, look over a dorm room at the Gateway International House, which was closed because of electrical problems.
The university has seen a decade of diminishing budgets that have cut deeply into resources for major dorm repairs, and only basic maintenance seems to have occurred over the same period, said Watts.
"These look like they came from the dump," said Watts, poking a fraying mattress in the closed-down Gateway dorm. Her standards call for mattresses replaced every seven years. At UH they have been replaced every 10 to 12 years.
With Gateway shut down until fall, 214 residents were farmed out to hastily leased hotel rooms and pockets of space in other dorms.
Meanwhile, a new made-to-order transformer is being built on the Mainland to power the building and should be on site by the end of May. Bids are about to go out to reroof the cafeteria because of water damage — caused in part by students dropping a couch off the lanai of the eighth or ninth floor last year.
"Very shortly we're going to get equipment up to the top floor and have teams of students and technicians go room by room to see what every room needs and try to repaint every one, fix the curtains and do as much damage control as we can to get back up by August," Watts said.
While Watts said students are hard on dorms — and could be evicted for causing major damage — she also recognizes that unkempt buildings don't inspire good behavior. There's more trash around than there should be, and students don't have the pride in their environment they should, she said.
This isn't lost on the students, some of whom have grown resigned.
"We're not up to par in housing compared to other schools, but what can you do?" said sophomore Mark Vingua, a civil engineering student, doing his laundry in a breezy open-air student laundromat at Noelani.
When he moved in, Vingua wondered if the braces holding up the second-floor outdoor walkways were going to hold. "Just the fact that we're not consistently improving things, it seems they've let things go for a long time," he said.
Students tidy up
The conditions appall Watts, but the possibilities for improvement also inspire her. She's encouraged by the roomy and pleasant rebuilt Hale Aloha cafeteria and its tree-shaded courtyard overlooking Mo'ili'ili and Waikiki.
And student staff, like Brian Howdeshell, residential life coordinator for the Hale Wainani dorm, are showing how even small improvements make big differences. For a few thousand dollars and using student labor, Howdeshell has power-washed the once-grimy concrete walkways around Wainani, filled the large planters with soil and grass, added benches, cleaned up the front desk area and launched a small cafe.
For $500, Jason Kama, hall director at Hale Kahawai, residential life coordinator Kuulei Pau and junior resident adviser Brittany Carr have worked together to gather up stray exercise equipment and find good buys on several additional pieces to turn an unused lounge into a fitness room that should open next week.
Meanwhile, complaints at Johnson Hall have subsided since rooms were painted and new furniture added there.
Roommates Brandon Lee and Andy Mish, both from Massachusetts, are cheerful about their Johnson Hall room, with its pleasant breeze even on warm days, despite the noise from Dole Street.
"You get used to it," Lee said of the street noise.
"I was in the military and this is better than living in a barracks," Mish said.
Making changes
"Students deserve fresh paint and clean rooms," Watts said. "There are pockets of pretty things, along with buildings that have been allowed to go to hell in a handbasket."
Already she's put into effect:
- New policies to immediately handle complaints, with the first return contact mandated within 24 hours. "I'm getting appeals coming to me that are 14 months old," said Watts. "I'm trying to build accountability from both sides."
- Opening dorms Aug. 18 (school starts Aug. 23) so students can have four days of training and activities in how to be part of a community. One of the days will involve having students decorate and create their own lounges, with a contest among the finished products.
Watts hopes to have stores and other firms donate paint, posters, lamps and fabric for the lounge contest.
And she hopes some community mentors, such as interior designers, will work with them.
"Every 50 students has a lounge," said Watts. "And hopefully they can spend the day designing them and make it fun."
More changes are coming toward the goal of responding to student needs and making the dorms a student-friendly community.
"We don't have enough places for students to get food after cafeteria hours," said Watts.
"We don't have all-night cafes and coffee stands, and students want more of that. And we need much better lighting, security, transportation.
"There have to be some things we can do to make students feel good about where they are. I feel really strongly we should treat them like hotel guests."
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
