Hill Hall renovations will last throughout the school year

The $15 million renovations to Hill Hall’s auditorium have altered the daily routine for music students and faculty alike.

“A lot of activities that people are used to seeing and doing have to be moved for a year for construction,” said Tonu Kalam, music director and conductor of the UNC Symphony Orchestra.

The plans for the renovations were put forth due to the old age of the building, among other reasons.

“It was never designed acoustically to be a performance space,” pProfessor Louise Toppin, chairwoman of the Department of Musicmusic department, said in an email. “And it lacks air conditioning, which rendered it useless in warm weather.”

Toppin said Hill Hall Auditorium opened in 1907 as a Carnegie Library before it was converted into a performance space.

Construction will completely redesign the auditorium acoustically and update heating and cooling capacities.

The auditorium will be completely redesigned acoustically and have updated heating and cooling capacity.

“All of our students, faculty and guests will have a state- of- the- art concert space, and the areas surrounding it will be what one expects when they attend an event on the UNC campus,” Jeffrey Fuchs, director of Uuniversity bands and coordinator of external affairs, said in an email.

In addition to the state-of-the-art auditorium, the building’s classrooms will also be modernized.

“The classrooms will get an upgrade and get more up-to-date technology,” Kalam said.

“I think (the renovations) will help our faculty who teach the music theory classes because they will have more equipment.”

The renovations, which started at the beginning of summer and are scheduled to finish be completed in September. 2016, mean that offices, classes and lessons have been moved to Kenan Music Building and Person Hall.

“We have also relocated all of our inventory to a storage facility off campus,” Fuchs said. “It will require us to plan ahead a little more, and we know that we will need 30 minutes to make a trip to the storage facility if necessary.”

Part of the building is still usable during construction, but the closing of the back entrance has limited access to Hill Hall has been compromised because the back entrance is closed.

However, faculty are confident the benefits of the renovation will outweigh the construction’s inconveniences.The inconveniences from the construction are sure to be outweighed by the modern renovations.

“This renovation supports the excellence of the music program faculty and students and will allow us to provide even better programming and classes for the University community,” Toppin said.

Toppin said the renovated auditorium will provide the music music department with better spaces to examine, inspire and produce creative work.

The people most affected will be those already involved with UNC’s music program, Kalam said.

“The incoming students won’t know what it used to be like,” Kalam said. “I don’t think they’ll be disoriented , because they won’t have any point of reference.”

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