Ongoing renovations can be seen inside the Derby Dining Hall at K-State. Photo by Adam Meyer/KMAN
MANHATTAN — After 60 years, the Derby Dining Center at Kansas State University is being renovated.
The renovation includes the lower level community space and tutoring centers as well as the main dining center area. Assistant Professor of Food, Nutrition, Dietetics and Health Mary Molt with Derby Dining Center says the upgrades are bringing a more modern flare to the dining hall.
“The dining service has changed over the 60 years that we have been serving meals out of the [Derby Dining Center],” Molt said. “The cuisines have changed over that time as well as the number of options has increased and changed.”
Molt says this renovation is much needed because it was hard to keep up the business with the structure that the Dining Center had.
The service and production style of the remodeled dining center will bring improved service and production system for the students.
As the Derby Dining Center is being remodeled, the cost of the whole project is $15 million which includes the lower level which includes community space and tutoring centers and the main dining center area.
K-State will pay for the project with bonds.
“We pay for 100 % of the revenues in housing and dining services,” Molt said.
During the renovation, instead of serving the students through the four main lines of an area, the students will be served in only a part of the dining center.
“We’re going to serve students on the other half of the building, the other two corners of the building , there will be four serving lines on those,” Molt said. “We have got the same number of serving lines. There will be a little bit of difference for us — especially in the production area.”
The new version of the Derby Dining Center at Kansas State University that will come out of an ongoing remodel will allow multiple beneficial things for improved dining and customer service to the students says Mary Molt of the Dining Center.
“This new design is going to allow us an opportunity to really cook to order and to cook in view of the customer when you are serving large numbers or small numbers so that we can gear up and gear down for the number of students that we will be serving,” Molt said.
Molt explains they hope to enhance the college experience and have the students feel more at home when they are in the dining center.
“The experience that we want students to have in our dining centers is the same kind of experience that we want students to have is part of going to college,” Molt said. “We want their home away from home to really truly be a place that they are comfortable in.”
The renovations are planned to be completed in two sections, one will be finished in August 2020 and the other in December 2020.
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