Ellington

A crowd of students, staff, and alumni gathered on the corner of Northeast 40th Street and Brooklyn Avenue Wednesday evening to celebrate the groundbreaking of the new Ethnic Cultural Center (ECC).

“This project has been a long time in the making,” said vice provost of diversity Sheila Edwards Lange. “Almost as soon as the first Ethnic Cultural Center was built, we outgrew it.”

Nearly tripling the size of the original ECC, the new center will total nearly 25,000 square feet, consist of three stories, and house a ballroom, kitchen, and eight conference rooms.

“I really think a gathering place is key,” UW President Michael Young said. “I think this is a terrific project for the university; we just have such a wonderfully diverse student body, and having the facilities that make sure everybody has the chance to gather and interact and learn from each other is a terrific thing.”

The project was approved by the Services and Activities Fee committee (SAF) in 2009, part of a $15.5 million renovation, which also includes the HUB and Hall Health and is estimated to be completed by December 2012. While it is being rebuilt, the ECC is temporarily located on the seventh floor of Condon Hall.

The original ECC was 10,000 square feet and only had four conference rooms. Maggie Fonseca, the interim director of the ECC, said the old building did not have enough room for students.

“Currently we have about 70 student organizations affiliated with the ECC, but not all of them are able to have their meetings in our center because there’s not enough room and not enough time,” Fonseca said. “The Ethnic Cultural Center was built originally back in 1971, and it was meant to be a temporary facility while the university looked for a more permanent space on campus. Almost 40 years later, the ECC was still in its original state.”

Despite its small space, Sierra Stewart, president of the Black Student Union, said the old ECC created a community where students felt comfortable.

“The old ECC was a place where you could just hang out and really get along with other people and other cultures,” Stewart said. “With Condon, we make it what we can, but it’s not the same. It’s a very grey building, and with the ECC you could go to different rooms and get a different feel for cultures.”

Samuel Cameron, the project architect, said they kept the students’ interests in mind when designing the new center.

“The Ethnic Cultural Center is a home away from home, and we are all alumni of the Ethnic Cultural Center and used it back in the ’70s and ’80s,” he said. “So we had a really good feel of what the students wanted and what they needed the space to be like.”

Stewart said students are looking forward to how the murals will be recreated in the new space. The 24 murals that resided in the original ECC were extracted before demolition and are currently in a refrigeration warehouse until they can be placed into the new center. Cameron said the murals will be hung from the third floor so they will be visible to all who enter the building.

“The architect has been really great with us, making sure that student opinion is really part of the whole process,” said Dalia Amin, chair of the Student Advisory Board for the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity. “It’s really nice that we are here today, actually shoveling the dirt, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God,’ it’s finally happening for real.”

Reach reporter Jillian Stampher at news@dailyuw.com.