WKU has started tearing down the university’s first formal student center, which opened in 1953, and will turn the Garrett Conference Center site at the top of the Hill into green space to complement the new WKU Commons at Helm Library.

“We did a full evaluation of the building some years ago, and it was past its useful life,” said Bryan Russell, WKU’s chief facilities officer. “And what that means is that the building’s systems and components and things within the building have exceeded their expected life usefulness, like the interior piping and the AC system. The infrastructure of the building was in really, really poor condition.”

Garrett, named for WKU’s second president, Paul L. Garrett, was a two-story building with a basement and wings on both sides.

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Charley Pride, WKU’s student activities director, said that before the 2000s, the building was used for events such as banquets, concerts, meetings and dances. There used to be a mystery movie night at the Garrett Center. The music group The Rembrandts, best known for the song “I’ll Be There For You,” the theme song for the TV show Friends, performed in the building’s ballroom.

“We had tons of dances. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, there were different dances, then in the ‘80s and ‘90s two organizations started using” the building, Pride said. “We had stuff after homecoming there. We had speakers. We had meetings. We had banquets.”

According to WKU’s TopScholar database, the building was originally built for $700,000 and then underwent an expansion that added a second floor and wings on either side for $1.2 million.

The building was home to the College Heights Herald and the Talisman from the mid-1980s through 2007, and also served as home for WKU’s champion forensics team. Most recently, Garrett was probably best known as the home of Panda Express, a popular restaurant on campus.

“It’s a building with history,” Pride said. “Too bad, sometimes things just outlive its life, its time and there will be some good memories for a lot of people.”

WKU will spend about $1 million to remove the building. After Garrett is demolished, Russell said, the site restoration will be done in phases. He said it will be completed during fiscal year 2022, which started July 1.

At one point, WKU considered a major renovation and expansion of Garrett to accommodate an array of new food options and activities. The Herald reported in 2016 that WKU was considering a $35 million project to refurbish Garrett as part of a long-term contract with Aramark, WKU’s food service provider, that included mandatory meal plans for most students.

However, those ideas shifted to a renovation of Helm Library, across Colonnade Drive from Garrett, into the WKU Commons.

“Once we evaluated what was going to be the cost to either take the building down, refurbish it, or build a new building,” Russell said, “the decision was made through our master plan process that we would … put resources into the Helm Library.”

Russell said the goal is to get the Garrett Conference Center down by this summer and get the area cleaned up before Aug. 15, while WKU Commons will be finished and occupied this fall.