SFU preparing for bathroom renovations

Posted on July 24, 2011.

This article was first published in The Peak on July 24, 2011.

Ask, and you shall receive — the university will be completely renovating and remodeling the southeast AQ bathrooms, with completion expected in September.

The renovations will not affect the largest bathrooms in the AQ, but will see a complete aesthetic upgrade for bathroom numbers 3158 and 3157, located at the southeast corner of the 3000 level, near the monument for founding dean of science Gordon Shrum.

“Everything will be changed cosmetically,” said Lana Sorbo of SFU facilities development, project services. “The exterior finish will be brand-new, including the fixtures, counters, partitions, tiles, wall finish, ceiling finish, and floor finish. Basically, in a couple months, everything you see will be brand new.”

The changes will also include the addition of a small single-unit unisex bathroom.

“That will be fairly useful for the general public, especially outsiders with families,” Sorbo said. “It’s because it’s a family-friendly community here.”

The current bathrooms will be shut down this week for the renovations to begin, and they are expected to open again in September. “That’s only one — there are other bathrooms in the AQ that will be unaffected, so it wouldn’t really be too big a deal for the students using the AQ.”

It’s currently unclear how much the university will be spending on the renovations, but Sorbo made it clear that the project was green-lighted in response to community pressure to improve the condition of SFU’s bathrooms.

“This is the start — we are systematically updating all the washrooms in all the public areas. This is probably what we can see as the beginning of it,” she said.

Students appear to be greeting news of the upgrades warmly. Fourth-year computer engineering major Jeffery MacEachern said that the quality of SFU’s bathrooms varies too widely. “Some of them are pretty well kept up, but some of the ones in more high-traffic areas are pretty run down . . . I think [the southeast AQ] is probably one of the ones that is most in need of being renovated at the moment. When I’ve gone in there, it’s usually pretty run down.”