Faster Fly-By, New Decor for Loker

A radically overhauled Loker Commons is still on pace to open this fall, offering Fly-By lunch, lounge seating, and three music practice rooms. But the beer will have to wait five more months.

“The only things we’re leaving are the four walls and the support pillars,” Project Manager for Loker Commons Planning and Program Development Zachary A. Corker ’04 said. “We’re essentially rebuilding the space.”

The much-anticipated Queen’s Head Pub will open at the start of the spring semester in February, “in time for senior spring,” Corker said.

The pub personnel will be hired in the fall—student staff will be recruited beginning at the campus activities fair, and Harvard Student Agencies will provide the leadership for the student management team, Corker said.

Construction in Loker began the first week in July. The rooms past the restrooms will not be renovated and will continue to be used as classrooms, offices, and student group meeting space, Corker said.

He said that students consulted on the project expressed an interest for Loker to look more like the rest of the building and for the pub to have a Harvard College feel. The new Loker is thus being designed to “match the splendor of Memorial Hall,” he said.

The architect for the Loker renovations, Miller Dyer Spears, also renovated the Adams House Dining Hall and the Lamont Language and Resource Center in 1997.

Spears did not respond to requests for comment this week.

Corker will also work with representatives of the inaugural College Events Board and the Harvard Concert Commission to plan the pub’s grant opening and spring events.

Fly-By, the meal offered to upperclass students who wish to remain in the Yard for lunch, will work differently in the renovated Loker. The space that Fly-By had previously occupied had not been designed for such a purpose, leading to long lines and inefficiencies.

The new location for Fly-By will be station-based, so that students will be able to go to different places to get a hot entree, soup, sandwich, or chips rather than wait in one line.

Fly-By will be located in the area where the enclosed coffee shop used to be, according to Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) Communications Coordinator Jami Snyder. The fact that Fly-By will have a designated space means that the process of getting a meal will be “more efficient and easier for students to flow though,” she said.

With the three music rooms open in the fall and the pub­ open in the spring, Loker will provide students with a place to both practice and perform, according to Corker. The pub will include a built-in stage on which groups will perform.

Corker said that he’s been working closely with Veritas Records to design performance space for groups. “We’ve really been taking cues from musicians on campus,” he said. One of the music rooms will contain a drum set for rock-and-roll groups on campus who might have difficulty practicing in House music rooms.

But students planning to use Loker for studying rather than strumming need not worry—the sound insulation equipment is more than sophisticated enough, Corker said.

“We’re engineering the [music room] spaces so that they’re totally isolated,” he said.

—Staff writer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.