Daylight Nears for Cannon

The DEC graduate board is planning to re-purchase the Cannon Club building with the intention of reopening the facility as an eating club, Vice President and Secretary Thomas Wright '62 said in an interview Thursday.

DEC graduate board chair Warren Crane '62 said the board would like to re-purchase Notestein Hall, the former home of Cannon Club, before the University-imposed June 30 deadline.

The decision, however, is contingent upon "the willingness of the club's alumni to donate sufficient funds to make it financially sensible and feasible to re-acquire the property and undertake the necessary renovations and all the other costs that would be incurred in getting to an orderly opening date for the club," Crane said.

The June 30 deadline to re-purchase the building, which currently houses the Office of Population Research, was arranged after the DEC graduate board sold the Dial and Elm buildings to the University in 1998. As part of that transaction, the DEC graduate board secured the option to take back the Cannon facility.

The Office of Population Research would have to be relocated before the facility is turned over to the DEC graduate board, according to Wright. "After they give us notice [that they are exercising the option to re-purchase], we have until April 15, 2001 to vacate the building," he said. "We expect to have the Wallace social science building completed and will be able to move the Office of Population Research to their new offices."

Even after the population research office is relocated, the club will not reopen until renovations to the building are complete, Crane said.

"We would do the renovations that are appropriate to put the building back into the kind of condition it would need to be in — and one would want it to be [in] — in order to facilitate operations as an eating club," he explained, noting that the building is currently outfitted for offices and would require significant modification.

Crane said he did not know when exactly the club will reopen. "I think, obviously, the two most likely opening dates are the beginning of a particular school year or in or around February of a school year," he said. "When we would get the facility and how long the renovations would take — and then when the next orderly opening opportunity would come up — is unclear at this point."

Once the University turns the building over, the DEC graduate board will decide if the club will be Bicker or sign-in.

Crane said the method of membership selection has not yet been determined. "There's been no discussion regarding that matter at the board level. Obviously there would be prior to any decision to reopen the club," he said.

DEC graduate board members are actively discussing the future of the club. "Obviously as the situation develops we'll inform the Princeton community of those developments as they occur in an appropriate fashion," Crane said.