Hannah Cha ’25
Have any of you noticed a change in our school’s dining hall? Yes, the place you go to every single day. Coming back from summer break, there has been a small difference in our beloved dining hall.
According to Eric J. Henchey, the director of dining at St. Mark’s, there has been a consistent attempt in the past eight years to fix the kitchen’s floor. The floor undergoes a variety of issues, with examples being disintegrating tiles and missing grouts. After a long period of time without additional constructions, the floor was starting to get water damage.
After the school’s approval in April, workers officially started the renovation project on June 13th. It was a difficult process since they needed to remove all kitchen equipment and serving counters prior to actual construction, and as they finished the challenging task, they could at last start removing the layers on the outside of floors. The original plan was to only remove several of the layers, but all the layers ended up being removed as issues kept recurring.
Dining hall in the renovation process as old layers of the floor were removed.
They then rebuilt the sub floor and layed a ‘welded floor’, which is waterproof and slip resistant. They have also replaced all the kitchen equipment and servery countertops. The walls were also newly painted with blue tint. The dishroom was also done since it had leaks into the basement in the past. Therefore, after the renovation, Mr. Henchey has solved that all the issues on maintaining the floor, and previous leaks have been fully addressed.
