Previously located in the Kirk Building, The Language Company-Kirksville will be in Grim Hall for the 2020-21 academic year.
TLC partners with colleges across the country to help students get accepted after they complete TLC’s intensive English programs.
TLC Director Alathea Barks said Grim Hall has worked well for the organization so far this year, as there were several issues with their previous location in the Kirk building. For example, all of TLC’s classrooms are on the same floor in Grim Hall instead of being spread across three floors, like they were in the Kirk building.
Grim Hall also has more bathrooms than the Kirk building. In the Kirk building, there was only one men’s restroom and one women’s restroom for the whole building, and neither were close to the TLC offices.
“So we knew it [the Kirk building] was one mishap away from having to shut it down … so we worked up a plan to move people out of there and then had it actually all laid out even before the COVID-19 thing hit,” Dave Rector, vice president for administration, finance and planning, said.
Barks said TLC chose to relocate to Grim Hall so offices and classrooms would not have to be spread throughout different buildings on campus. The front area of Grim Hall, the oldest part of the building, is currently being used as office space. The residence hall in the back of the building was added on later, and is being used as classrooms.
Barks said, overall, the building is in pretty good condition, but had to be thoroughly cleaned before TLC could move in.
“Apparently one of the last things the building was used for was a haunted house,” Barks said. “The clean up for the haunted house apparently was not done so well, so they came in, they scrubbed floors, scraped fake blood off walls, all kinds of things. They redid the lighting in most of the dorm rooms to make it better for classroom lighting, we got new carpets, and in the front part of the building most of the carpet was torn up.”
She said there haven’t been any significant issues since TLC has been in the building.