Move the Mailboxes, Dig Up the Lawn: Rx for an Ailing Campus Center

Pomona College called in SmithGroup to make an eight-year-old campus center more appealing to students. (Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)

Pomona College’s Smith Campus Center was widely praised when it opened in 1999—almost everyone thought it was a handsome building that fit perfectly into the college’s Spanish Renaissance campus core. But students stubbornly stayed away, and when college officials took another look, they could see why. The furnishings were too formal, the game room was isolated on the second floor, and the promised pub had been eliminated in one of two rounds of cost-cutting. The college tried little fixes, but finally it concluded that the building needed a makeover.

The renovations were completed last year. Not only was the game room moved downstairs, to a new space adjoining the snack bar, but the campus mailboxes were moved into one end of a comfortable new see-and-be-seen living room, and a pub was created in the basement, complete with an outdoor patio. Read about the project in our Architecture Issue, and see a slideshow of the changes.