Virginia Tech’s newest dining hall is engineered for the student experience

Virginia Tech is known for engineering, construction and innovation in those fields. The school doesn’t waste an opportunity to allow all the players and stakeholders to collaborate and learn as they do it. 

Brian Grove, director of dining services at Virginia Tech, is now seeing the end product of seven years of planning and construction for the newest dining facility/education building on campus. Big ideas—sustainabilty and collaboration—and small but important details—enough waffle irons in the all-day diner—have all come together in the form of Perry Place at Hitt Hall. 

Grove sees this new construction as a place to “better serve our students, faculty and staff.”

Hitt Hall is a 100,000-sq. ft. new facility that’s been constructed to support the Myers-Lawson School of Construction within Virginia Tech’s North Academic District. On the outside, the structure is clad in Virginia Tech’s signature Hokie Stone, which comes from a nearby limestone quarry and covers nearly every building on campus, creating a unified architectural look. 

But on the inside, Hitt Hall and especially its dining component, Perry Place, are different from what’s been built before. The construction itself was woven into a learning experience and it’s ongoing, with partnerships like the Coalition for Smart Construction, a university-industry collaboration with federal and state agencies for innovation in the construction sector. Sustainability and carbon-footprint reducing measures are built into the facility, and even employees t-shirts are made with sustainably sourced cotton and solvent-free inks.

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“This school was created for the industry by the industry,” said Brian Kleiner, director of the Myers-Lawson School of Construction. The spaces inside allow for a flexible, forward-thinking approach to different teaching and learning styles, complete with open collaboration zones.

And the new dining space, Perry Place, with 600 seats and a set of surefire concepts, including a full-service Chick-fil-A. Signature venues include AMP Coffee, a sustainably focused coffeehouse; Smoke, a BBQ joint (complete with smokers); Solarex, an all-day breakfast diner; Veloces, classic Italian; Trax Deli for sandwiches; Fresh & Feta for Mediterranean cuisine and Addison’s Provision, a grab-and-go spot.  

AMP Coffee looks like a primo place to study. | Photo courtesy of Darren Van Dyke, Photographer/ Videographer

According to Grove, Smoke has been the most crazy-popular concept with a consistent “line a mile long” for its to-die-for beef brisket, pulled pork, smoked turkey and more. The dining team researched barbecue regions and came up with a nice hybrid barbecue style that borrows mainly from Texas and Kansas City. 

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The all-day diner, Solarex, was the students’ idea, Grove says. 

All-day breakfast is the order of the day at Solarex. | Photo courtesy of Darren Van Dyke, Photographer/ Videographer

“Solarex came from the students,” he says. “They said, ‘I really want breakfast all day long,’ and they also want Mediterranean food, and of course they like smoked meats, too, so you take that and that’s what we did.”

Rambutan is noteworthy because it’s a one-of-a-kind Mai Pham original concept. Pham’s familiar Star Ginger concepts are found on quite a few campuses around the country, but Rambutan is completely new. “We went to Mai and said, ‘We don’t want a Star Ginger; we want a new brand, maybe a hybrid with a few twists.”

Mai Pham created this concept just for Virginia Tech. | Photo courtesy of Darren Van Dyke, Photographer/ Videographer

A sticking point with student feedback has shown a lack of authentic Asian food, so Grove sees Rambutan as a great solution. And, as the school year progresses, students have found their own favorite concepts. “Every concept has a little following,” Grove says. 

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