Longtime Duke Dining Spot Closes, Freeing Up Space for Cultural Centers

DURHAM, N.C. -- Faced with declining revenues, the Oak Room, a full service dining venue on Duke University's West Campus since 1946, has closed its doors.

The move will allow the reallocation of space for several student centers. The Oak Room's location on the second floor of the West Union Building will be renovated for use as the new Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, said Larry Moneta, vice president for Student Affairs. The center's current spot, in the basement of the West Union Building, will become the new home of the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Life (LGBT). In turn, the LGBT center's current space on the second floor of the Flowers Building will be transformed into office space for the Division of Student Affairs.

Moneta said the Oak Room's continuing struggles and a commitment to provide better cultural space made the timing right for the moves. A cultural space report in May 2001, which resulted in the creation of a multicultural center in the Bryan Center, also recommended that the Mary Lou Williams Center be given a more prominent location and granted additional space.

"Both moves address not only cultural and diversity initiatives, but address broader issues of space in the community," Moneta said. "I see this as a double win."

The decision was announced at Thursday's Academic Council meeting. The Faculty Commons, also located on the second floor next to the Oak Room, will continue to serve meals to university faculty. Administrators said they hope to entice faculty to dine there more often, with the possibility of allowing students to dine with faculty to bolster interaction.

The Oak Room has struggled through a series of redesigns in recent years, failing to attract enough patrons as other outsourced dining venues have emerged on West Campus. The restaurant has been losing money for the past decade, said Jim Wulforst, director of Dining Services.

"I have kind of mixed emotions about this," Wulforst said. "I think we've done some great things with the Oak Room, but the trends we're seeing are that students may not really have an hour and a half to sit down."

Leon Dunkley, director of the Mary Lou Williams Center, said the new space will be an improvement over the current location, as the center continues to expand in scope.

"It will allow us to have more room to house some larger functions and a larger library," he said. "This will also open some space for a programmer we have coming this year."

The shuffling of cultural space has been one of Moneta's goals, as he begins to realign student space on West Campus into a "student village."

The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture was founded in 1983 to strengthen the university's commitment to foster an appreciation of the heritage of black Americans. Featuring an art gallery, library and lounge, the center sponsors events and speakers on diverse topics such as feminism, hunger and poverty.

"I feel that Duke is making a huge stride forward," Dunkley said.