Published: Friday, February 8, 2013 1:06 AM CST

The Mount Marty College cafeteria in Roncalli is undergoing a major face lift.

The renovations began around Christmas, right as students left campus after finals.

One of the major parts of the renovation is the reconfiguration of the serving line. The new layout will offer students multiple hot and cold stations for food, an area just for pizza, a new griddle and an Asian wok station.

“One of the goals we had for the renovation was not to disrupt students during the process,” said Sarah Carda, vice president and dean of Student Affairs. “For now, we have been able to accommodate students by serving buffet-style meals, and there still have been a few wok-style concepts in place during the renovations.”

In addition to improvements with the serving line, the main dining room will also get a makeover featuring new decor, banquet quality chairs and tables, shades for the windows, decorations for the walls and new paint.

The estimated cost of the renovations is about $325,000 and is projected to be completed around Feb. 18.

“We haven’t done too much with the kitchen, so most of the major ovens and grills we have are intact,” Carda said.

“Before the project began, the dining hall was original to the building built in 1967 and the serving line was just one long buffet style line,” she added.

The first major event for the new dining hall will be the Women of Distinction luncheon, set to take place on Feb. 18.

“The event will allow a lot of the people from the community to see the changes we have made,” Carda said.

Tiling for the renovations will go in this week, while the new cabinets and serving line will go in next week.

“We were hoping everything would be done by this week, but it didn’t work out that way,” she said. “Even if we could get everything done by this week, there are still a lot of things that need to get done, like getting inspections done and getting all the necessary building codes.”

Another recent change to the food service on campus is Mount Marty switching from its previous food service provider, Aramark, to Minneapolis-based A’viands on a 10-year contract. The change took place when the students came back to campus in August.

“A’viands brings in chefs from Minneapolis to go over menus with our employees here,” Carda said. “We’re not just serving students the same kinds of things all the time. We want to offer them new and healthy foods and expose them to different foods.”

Another big reason for the switch is because officials from A’viands talked to Mount Marty staff members about their concepts of foods, including new, fresh foods and trying to use local resources whenever         possible.

“We knew we had to do something for the students with the cafeteria,” she said. “Students were frustrated with the food so we knew we had to make a change.”

She added that the new dining service will be much better for students when everything is in place, with far more options for students than there were before.

“It’s important to show the students that we are always trying to grow and evolve and make things better for them,” Carda said. “It’s nice to see those kinds of things happening on campus.”

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