The Cellar gets pulled

Looking for an early morning caffeine fix? Do not look to The Cellar. Due to ongoing construction near Sanford Hall, The Cellar permanently closed its doors on March 28.

The people most affected by the closing are the employees. The Cellar’s employees were given less than a two week’s notice that they were losing their jobs and were given no option to transfer to another campus service.

Matthew Michael, an employee of the Cellar for over a year, is angry he lost his job with no real advance notice.

“There is still no promise that construction will start immediately, but we had to leave our jobs anyway,” Michael said. “I feel like the school is more focused on the future students and what can be done to attract new faces, but they have forgotten about the students who are presently paying for classes.”

Kyle Cullars, director of Auxiliary Services, expressed remorse that the employees were not given more notice.

“The closing came a lot sooner than we thought because we had to cut the power at Sanford,” Cullars said. “It was dictated by the construction schedule. The construction crew needed to be in there by the first of April. Unfortunately, it was all the notice we had to give.”
Auxiliary Services, the office in charge of running The Cellar, sent out a campus-wide email asking for assistance in helping The Cellar’s employees find other work.

Paul Jahr, assistant vice president for Student Affairs, believed that the Cellar wasn’t making enough money to stay open anyway.

“In terms of revenue generated from sales, versus the expenditures involved in operating the facility, it is my understanding that revenue was not enough to meet expenses,” Jahr said.

“It has never been profitable,” Cullars said. “It was a service the university decided to offer and decided to lose money on. However, that is not the reason it was closed.”

For students who relied on the coffeehouse, Starbucks coffee is offered by Chick-fil-A every morning. Also, for students who purchased The Cellars frequent coffee purchase card, Sodexho will honor the card at Chick-fil-A until April. After that, students have to buy a Sodexho frequent purchase card; whereby, students will receive a free cup of coffee for each tenth cup purchased.

The Cyber Cafe, the new campus coffeehouse, will be located in the newly renovated Ina Dillard Russell Library. There are plans to reopen the existing Cellar space as a new food service operation, after Sanford renovations are complete.

“The hope is to have a full food service operation and we want student input on what kind of service,” Cullars said. “I definitely see it as a hangout place, a place where students can go to study.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 4 2003. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry