Cannon Club opening still set for spring 2011

Cannon Club is still scheduled to open in spring 2011, said Mercedes Naficy-D’Angelo ’84, secretary of the Dial, Elm and Cannon Club graduate board. “We’d love for that to happen, though we hoped it would happen a little sooner,” she said on Sunday.

Naficy-D’Angelo explained that DEC is currently “putting the final touches” on the club’s construction contract and noted that the graduate board hopes to break ground within months to restore “a truly gorgeous club.”

Cannon Club, Elm Club and Dial Lodge, all defunct, make up the DEC graduate board, which has coordinated efforts to reopen the club.

Cannon’s ostensible reopening has been postponed numerous times in recent years. In 2007, the DEC board announced that Cannon would reopen in spring 2008 after settling prolonged real estate problems. But following difficulties in obtaining construction permits from Princeton Borough, the board pushed back the club’s opening date to spring 2009. In October 2008, former DEC graduate board chair Warren Crane ’62 announced that the club’s opening date would be delayed until February 2010, and last year, Crane said that the opening date had been postponed to 2011 due to the economic recession.

Interclub Council adviser Tim Prugar ’06 said that Crane is no longer the president of the board. His replacement has not been named.

Cannon’s place in the Princeton social scene has long been a topic of discussion among undergraduates, administrators and graduate board members. Most of the speculation has revolved around how Cannon will select its membership and, if it chooses to open as a bicker club, who will conduct Bicker.

The DEC graduate board has the final say in how membership will be determined, Prugar said.

Naficy-D’Angelo explained that the DEC board hopes to conduct focus groups with students to see what role Cannon should play in the Street’s social scene, noting that the board has engaged with Executive Vice President Mark Burstein and graduate board members from other clubs to seek input.

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Burstein declined to comment on the plans.

“We have lots of decisions to make,” Naficy-D’Angelo explained. “I think there’s a lot to do — not just the renovation and the furnishing of it, but how we’re going to open it.”

“The Street is for the most part really excited about Cannon’s potential reopening,” ICC president Martin Scheeler ’11 said in an e-mail. “The sentiment towards Cannon is independent of whether it would be Bicker or sign-in. We’re just excited by the prospect of increasing the number and diversity of eating club options that students have to choose from.”

When Cannon folded in 1973, it had garnered a reputation as the rowdiest club on the Street, with dual taprooms and stairway motorcycle rides, as well as incidents with racist and sexist overtones.

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Like Cannon, both Dial and Elm closed for financial reasons, shutting their doors in 1988 and 1989, respectively. Attempts to revive these clubs date back to 1990, when the DEC graduate board opened the single consolidated club DEC that selected its membership through a combination of Bicker and sign-in. After struggling with membership over its eight-year existence, DEC closed in 1998.

The DEC graduate board purchased the Cannon clubhouse — Notestein Hall, as it was renamed by the University after Cannon closed — from the University in 2001. Notestein had housed the University Writing Center, while Dial is now the Bendheim Center for Finance and Elm is currently the Fields Center.