Auraria Campus
Denver, Colorado
The Auraria Campus in the heart of downtown Denver is unlike most traditional college campuses. It is home to not one but three higher-learning institutions: The University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University (MSU) of Denver and Community College of Denver. And what it lacks in conventional campus amenities — there’s no on-campus student housing, for example — it makes up for with its urban setting just blocks from downtown art museums, the performing arts center, the Pepsi Center, Coors Field and the hip LoDo neighborhood.
The historic Tivoli Student Union houses about 25 event and conference spaces, ranging from boardrooms to the former Turnhalle opera house, which can host receptions for up to 700 people. Another popular room is the Adirondacks, where two large copper kettles remain from when the 1870 building was the Tivoli Brewing Co., said Tommy Leonard, event facility coordinator for Auraria Campus Event Services.
The open floor space and stage in the 1925 Spanish Colonial St. Cajetan’s church make it popular for lectures, he said, and the Event Center is the campus’ highest-capacity space with a gym that can hold up to 2,700.
The Auraria campus doesn’t have its own catering arm, but event services works with several authorized caterers, “which gives us more diversity in menus and flexibility in budget,” he said. Event services also handles all audiovisual components in-house. Although the campus doesn’t have student housing, the on-campus, 150-room Springhill Suites hotel partners with MSU’s hospitality program, has 5,000 square feet of meeting space and offers its own banquet services.
www.ahec.edu/for-campus-faculty-staff/event-services
Villanova University
Villanova, Pennsylvania
Universities have access to services “that a typical conference center or hotel usually doesn’t have,” said Ron Diment, director of Villanova University Conference Services.
Those support services “are inherent in the operation of the university,” he added, so when a planner needs help with an audiovisual component or technology, for example, Villanova conference services can tap the university’s 130 full-time information technology department employees, he said.
About a mile off campus, the Villanova University Conference Center has 21,000 square feet of meeting space for groups of up to 250 people. On campus, there are a host of venues: nearly 200 classrooms and conference rooms, a dozen auditoriums, a ballroom at the Connelly Center that hold about 500 guests, The Pavilion indoor arena that seats 6,500 and the outdoor Villanova Stadium for up to 12,000 people.
Catering is a “major part of what we do,” and Villanova’s self-operated catering service allows staff to control quality and service, Diment said.
During the summer, the university holds its 320 guest apartments strictly for adult groups. Each sleeps two to four people and has its own kitchen and living room. The school has another 2,500 beds in traditional dormitories.
Villanova can schedule shows for groups at its planetarium or help arrange for them to use sports, recreation and fitness facilities. The school’s on-campus Challenge Course — a ropes course and climbing wall — is popular for groups, and Villanova once held a corporate Olympics for a company at its stadium.
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey
Rutgers University was founded in 1766, making it one of only nine U.S. colleges established before the American Revolution. The school will celebrate its 250th anniversary next year, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of the Rutgers University Inn and Conference Center.
In 1965, the university acquired the 21-acre Carpender estate, including the 20-room historic manor. The school built an addition to the manor that was originally intended for adult extension programs and classes. Over the years, the center’s purpose morphed into serving meetings and conferences. Today, five of the six conference rooms are located in the historic manor house, and 32 guest rooms and the largest conference room with 1,140 square feet are in the addition.
Rutgers University has its own in-house conference services division that operates only in the summer, renting out dorm rooms and arranging on-campus venues for meetings. Although the conference center has only 3,000 square feet of meeting space, which can limit its audience, it is a stand-alone operation that operates year-round, Pagnozzi said.
The conference center provides all audiovisual services in-house, as well as media production services such as recording lectures or live streaming presentations. The center’s full-service catering is usually provided through the university’s catering services.
Although the center staff doesn’t often get requests to book other campus venues, when they do, they can act as a conduit to connect planners with the right people to arrange to use the recreation center or the campus ropes course, Pagnozzi said.
