The completion of a $3.3 million redevelopment project which has transformed the former Gardens Tavern in Dunedin into a new University of Otago student study centre was celebrated yesterday.
The Marsh Study Centre has been named in honour of Graeme Marsh, an Otago University commerce graduate and Dunedin businessman, and his extended family, who together helped fund the redevelopment project.
At the opening, former Otago University vice-chancellor Prof Sir David Skegg said the university was not engaged in a ''dastardly'' scheme to buy all the hotels in the campus area and convert them for university use. He highlighted the positive nature of the new facility, at the north end of Castle St. The university had ''grown enormously'' over the past two decades but it had realised it could not simply replicate the university central library complex elsewhere.
The study centre was not a library but offered warm, well-lit study facilities, he said.
The 220 study spaces brought to 4280 the number of spaces provided by the university, not counting facilities at halls of residence.
Mr Marsh, a former member of the University Council, also spoke and unveiled a plaque.
