The wait is over.

After a short stint of temporary dining accommodations last semester in order to gut and renovate the structure, the new dining commons is officially up and running at American International College.

The old dining hall was shut down after students took off for winter break last December. In order to continue serving meals on campus last semester, a makeshift dining area was set up in the auditorium atop the campus center, while the building housing the DC underwent its first complete renovation since 1966.

Despite an early projection that the dining commons would be set to open August 17, the new $8 million DC wasn’t quite ready for day one when students returned to school at the end of the August. But after a week or so, the doors opened up on Wednesday, September 2. While the interior was ready for business, construction crews continued to put the finishing touches on the exterior.

Floyd Young, the Vice President for Campus Services at AIC, is ecstatic with the completion of the new dining commons.

“I’m really excited about the overall openness of the dining hall,” Young said. “Before you had basically one line and it would get very cluttered, but now it’s more spread out and much more organized.”

Young and college officials anticipate September 27 as the date in which all work will be complete: inside and out, upstairs and downstairs.

Hungry members of the campus community who frequent the new dining commons are treated with additions such as a wood-fired pizza oven, a Mongolian grill and bakery selections, among other stations.

“Student nowadays don’t like that plain, bland food from the past… Food has to have a little more diversity and flavor in it,” Young points out. Chartwells is still the food servicer, but Young says the menu is different than in years past.

The temporary setup of last winter may not have been the most ideal scenario, and some departing seniors were disappointed with the situation.

“When you have to relocate and come up with a temporary situation, of course not everyone’s happy,” Young said. “But you talk them through it… That’s why we put out all those pictures early on of what was to come, to make sure the buzz was out there. I like to mingle and speak with the students, and we definitely use their feedback to change things. In the end, the students are pretty happy.”

Students around campus are indeed happy with the new digs. Megan Stewardson, a sophomore at AIC, is very pleased with the renovation.

“I think the dining hall is fantastic now, it was definitely worth the wait,” Stewardson said. “It’s very modern, and it’s a breath of fresh air on campus. My go-to is the salad bar.”

Now, eaters enter a brighter, flashier, more open and organized dining setting, as opposed to the drab and outdated previous dining hall. Young emphasizes the increased comfort level at the new dining commons, pointing out that “the old dining commons didn’t have air conditioning, but now we have fully-automated AC,” which came in handy for the string of 90 degree days in the first couple weeks on campus.

When the construction crews finally vacate AIC and the building is 100 percent complete, students will also be excited to see the newly-renovated Stinger Pub downstairs. A ribbon cutting ceremony is tentatively scheduled for October1^st, officially capping off the project.