The amalgamation of construction tape, scaffolding and plastic sheets known as Hodgin Hall has been out of service for more than a year, and it’s also nearly $1 million over budget.
The original renovation budget was $2 million, according to University Communications and Marketing, but the budget is now $2,937,497, according to a document from UNM Office of Capital Projects, and officials said they underestimated the amount of renewal and replacement the project required. The building first went under construction in March 2010 and will reopen to the public in September.
Hodgin Hall houses the UNM Alumni Association and the UNM Alumni Relations Office. Regent Don Chalmers said it’s vital to fund the center because alumni are the University’s future donors.
“Keeping in touch with them to get their support in many ways, financial and in the Legislature, is extremely important for a university,” he said.
UNM alumni donated $18.1 million in gifts to UNM during 2009-10, almost a quarter of all gifts made out to the University, according to the UNM Foundation’s Annual Report of Giving. These donations went to scholarships and not construction.
To fund construction, state general funds contributed $100,000 in 2005. The project received $183,800 in general funding in 2007. The center also received more than $1.1 million from a severance tax bond, and $1.5 million from UNM system Revenue Bonds.
Alumni Relations Associate Vice President Karen Abraham said the center will reopen in September. She said the regents designated Hodgin Hall for the alumni center in 2005.
“It didn’t have any state-of-the-art facilities, and the electrical systems were not very good,” she said. “We went to the legislature and got about 40 legislators to give an average of about $2,500 each to help support renovations of the building.”
Abraham said alumni will raise money to maintain the building once the renovations are done.
Capital Projects Group Manager Mike Reid said the renovation crew dealt with difficulties when fixing up the 100-year-old building.
“There were instances where they had to remove a lot of the walls, almost 50 percent, because they were running new wiring and new IT,” he said.
Rick Henrard, also a group manager for Capital Projects, said part of the building’s fire code was out of date, and construction crews had to make sprinkler modifications to comply with code.
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“We ran into a whole lot of old, rusted pipe on the radiators,” he said. “We replaced a lot of that, and then we ended up replacing electrical conduits.”
In several spots around the building, the flooring and walls were not replaced and instead framed in glass or plastic to expose the building’s original materials, Abraham said. Hodgin Hall has not always been a protected relic of UNM’s past, she said
“It is the soul of the University, and it represents how the University began,” she said. “In the 1970s, it was going to be knocked down for the engineering campus, but the alumni saved it. We raised money, and renovated the building and reopened in 1982.”
