Zysman Hall Exterior to be Renovated, Honors Program Lounge to be Moved

Two renovation projects on the Wilf Campus will begin this semester as the facade and roof of Zysman Hall will be redone and the lounge for the Yeshiva College Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program will move from Furst Hall to Belfer Hall.

In an email sent in June to the YU community regarding the various renovation projects around the Wilf campus, including the 185th Street Plaza, the Amsterdam Mall, and Zysman Hall, Senior Vice President Joshua Joseph stated that “The roof of Zysman Hall is being renovated and the building’s facade continues to be reconditioned.” He also mentioned that “the sidewalk bridges [in front of Zysman Hall] should be removed by the end of summer/early fall.”

The renovations were slated to begin around the end of the summer or beginning of the new academic year but have not yet started. When asked about the Zysman project’s status and what may have caused the delay, Matthew Yaniv, YU Director of Marketing and Communications, said that, “The project was supposed to begin over the summer but was unavoidably delayed,” he wrote in an email. “We hope to have it completed by year end.”

The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program’s lounge will be moved this semester from the basement level of Furst Hall to the basement level of Belfer Hall. Dr. Shalom Holtz, the program’s director, said Dr. Karen Bacon, Dean of Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences, notified him of the change at the beginning of the Fall 2017 semester. When asked why the lounge is being moved, Holtz explained that the university wanted to use the basement of Furst Hall for another project and therefore had to move the honors lounge elsewhere. YU will use money from a grant it received to turn the area currently used as the Honors Lounge into a technological research lab.

The Honors Program currently uses the space approximately every two weeks to hold “Honors luncheons”, events where various guests and YU professors speak to honors students about their academic work or other experiences, both personal and professional.

Holtz said that “I am very satisfied with the alternative we’ve been offered and we’ll use it to its full capacity.” The lounge was established after the program’s inception but has always existed in its current location.

These renovations continue the stream of infrastructure renovations the university launched on the Wilf campus this past year, including the new 185th Street Plaza, renovations to floors 5 and 5A of the Mendel Gottesman Library for Hebraica-Judaica, and renovations done to the original Amsterdam Mall.