De Neve dining hall and Rendezvous, two residential restaurants on the Hill, are scheduled to close within the next year to undergo a total of $3.6 million in renovations.
De Neve dining hall will close during the spring and summer of 2014, and is set to reopen fall of next year, said Peter Angelis, assistant vice chancellor of UCLA Housing and Hospitality Services. Rendezvous will close in fall of 2014 and is predicted to reopen in summer of 2015, he said.
De Neve dining hall is set to reopen before Rendezvous closes for repairs, Angelis added.
De Neve dining hall is predicted to cost $1.2 million to renovate and Rendezvous is set to cost $2.4 million, he said.
De Neve dining hall, which seats up to 900 people at a time, is one of the most popular dining facilities on the Hill, and UCLA intends to expedite the renovations by avoiding a total gut of the dining hall’s interior, Angelis said.
The woodwork will be redone because it is hard for staff to push carts and the tile is easily breakable, costing UCLA Dining Services a lot in repairs. The salad bar will also be revamped in addition to other small renovations, Angelis said.
In Rendezvous, the bulk of the renovations will entail expanding storage space in order to hold more food and serve more students, Angelis said.
Rendezvous is currently serving twice as many students as it is intended to, Angelis said. The quick-service restaurant is adequately equipped to serve 3,000 people a day, but right now it serves approximately 6,000, Angelis said.
Angelis said he thinks Hedrick Test Kitchen is not working to its full potential this quarter, and his team is planning on moving De Neve Late Night to Hedrick Test Kitchen when De Neve dining hall closes in the spring.
Dining Services waited to make sure Bruin Plate in Sproul was fully open and functioning before beginning renovations, in an attempt to reduce long lines and other dining inconveniences for students, said Daryl Ansel, director of food and beverage for Housing and Hospitality Services.
Ansel said that based on the popularity of De Neve dining hall and Rendezvous, he expects that students will be unhappy about their temporary closures. But he said that the Office of Residential Life is open to having dialogues with the students about the impending changes to the Hill’s dining facilities.
Dining Services and the Office of Residential Life will host a meeting for residents to express their questions and concerns about the renovations on Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. in Rieber Terrace.
Compiled by Julia Raven, Bruin contributor.
RENDEZVOUS
I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO WITH MYSELF.
A couple million??? What a shame and waste of money in a school that prides itself in social justice.
Can you explain what this has to do with social justice?
How about lowering the tuition?
What does that have to do with this?
It seems like Housing is always renovating one dining hall or another.