CLARIFICATIONS: In this article, a statement from Alex Brewer regarding the time frame of the expansion was unclear. The statement  ‘Brewer said he expected it to take one to two years to plan an expansion into Food Works, not several months,’ was in reference to the time frame from when CitrusTV and Z89 approarched the university regarding the expansion, to when the expansion was confirmed.

Another statement in this regarding Brewer’s statement ‘All the time it’s way overcrowded, and there’s a need for computers to edit stuff,’ is in reference to CitrusTV, not Z89. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.

The Food Works grocery store in the basement of Watson Hall will become a thing of the past in May when CitrusTV and radio station Z89 acquire the space to expand their organizations.

Rising membership in CitrusTV and requests from both student-run organizations to acquire more working space have led to the expansion into Food Works, which sits between Z89 and CitrusTV.

‘Our membership is growing rapidly, and we only have so much equipment and so much space,’ said Ben Slutzky, CitrusTV’s general manager. ‘And we’re somewhat cramped in that space.’

CitrusTV needs more video-editing stations and meeting space, as membership has jumped from between 200 and 250 people last year to more than 350 members this year, Slutzky said.

CitrusTV students contacted Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s office for several months about the possibility of expanding into Food Works, he said. Last Monday, Peter Webber, SU’s director of auxiliary services, confirmed the expansion to Slutzky.

Funding for the CitrusTV expansion will probably come from SU and the station’s alumni, Slutzky said, and costs will not affect the student activity fee.

Station members are hoping to build a new edit bay to allow four or five additional video editors to work on stories at once, but complete plans are still in the works, Slutzky said. Crews may knock down walls and add new doors as part of the expansion, he said.

For Z89, the expansion will allow for another voiceover room and additional space for students to meet and create ideas, said Alex Brewer, former general manager at Z89 and a staff member at CitrusTV.

The Z89 station currently holds one production studio, one on-air studio and four computers in the back. There are between 80 and 100 people on staff, and even though everyone is not there at once, computers clutter the space, Brewer said.

‘All the time it’s way overcrowded, and there’s a need for computers to edit stuff,’ he said. 

Brewer said he expected it to take one to two years to plan an expansion into Food Works, not several months.

Syracuse University officials will redistribute items from Food Works into Schine Student Center and Kimmel Food Court, said Sara Miller, associate director of news services, in an e-mail. The university will also add more beverage- and food-vending services in Watson Hall, she said.

Food Works employees will not lose their jobs but be reassigned to different locations, she said. 

‘It’s not like we don’t think they’re useful,’ Brewer said about Food Works. ‘It’s not like we wanted to dominate the space.’

Brewer hopes to complete expansion for Z89 by the fall, but it depends on where the funding will come from and how long it will take to receive it, he said. He also said he currently does not know the entire funding plan, as it may involve a lot of different people and places.

‘We’re not going to just start jumping into something we don’t think we can pay for,’ he said. ‘We want to do it right rather than do it rushed.’

mcboren@syr.edu

Published on February 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm