Check out what Mac students want to do with the empty lot at 1661 Grand.

Transcript of 1661 video

The Mac Weekly: What would you put on the empty lot between the C-House and Pad Thai?

Zahara Spilka ’21: A cat café.

[Cut scene. On-screen text reads “Last January, Macalester acquired the vacant lot at 1661 Grand Avenue”]

Veronica Vasquez ’21: Like a coffee shop.

Zahara: Yeah like a coffee shop. A coffee shop with cats and tea

Veronica: That’s better than my idea, I was just going to say more like housing for, like, upperclassmen.

[Cut scene. On-screen text reads “And that’s what the college is considering too. Building a new dorm for upperclassmen here”]

Veronica: That’d actually be a good spot because I mean, other housing’s like right there.

Zahara: That is true.

[Cut scene. On-screen text reads “The Mac Weekly asked students what they would build at 1661 Grand”]

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Caroline Tevnan ’21: I think what Macalester is severely lacking in is a giant industrial trampoline that I can jump on all the time.

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Margaret Breen ’20: I would really like to see a grocery store in between Pad Thai and the C-House. I think MacShare could have like a more permanent set-up there and that would be really cool and handy for students and make access to healthy food more accessible.

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Connor Skutt ’21: I would probably put a parking lot there because there’s like no parking on campus and it would be nice to have more legal parking.

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Mohamed Mohamed ’21: You know downstairs you have the Loch, right. So take the pool and all of that stuff from the Loch and have a building where people go there to have fun. Like have all different sort of games and like…um…where, I don’t know, like people can have fun. ———

Rex Desso ’22: Probably new dorms. We need more dorms.

TMW: More dorms? Why do you think we need more dorms?

Rex Desso ’22: I don’t know, I just think it’d be nice.

TMW: Like nicer dorms?

Rex: Yeah.

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Zhantao Luo ’19: Another basketball court, maybe?

TMW: Another basketball court?

Zhantao: Put some animals.

TMW: What kind of animals would you like to see?

Zhantao: Just like when we see the petting zoo every year, we can just put that.

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Nathan Gottlieb ’22: Maybe so like more dorms over there and have the rooms bigger and then you can expand the existing dorms’ rooms per se to have them be bigger.

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Emma Curchin ’22: We really want to dance more.

Grace Jones ’22: We need a dance space.

Emma: We need a dance space.

Grace: Yeah, we need a dance space.

Emma: To, like, crazy dance when we’re stressed and we want to have fun.

Grace: It needs to happen.

Emma: So…it could be like a really cool music space cause…I don’t know…I play the trumpet, we need more like cool music…

Grace: Just go there and freestyle it up.

Emma: But also just putting on music really, really loud. ‘Cause Kagins are awful.

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Conor Galvin ’19: I think one thing, kind of depending on whether or not Macalester wants to expand class sizes is one thing I’ve heard is that they’re going to put up a new dorm so that they’ll have more on-space living and then will force people to live on campus for three years because I’ve heard a lot of smaller private liberal arts schools are doing that and I would not like to see that because I think that it’s kind of another money grab and it will force people to essentially pay more money in the long run to Macalester. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s kind of nice for people to have that option after two years to go live off campus if they choose.

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[Cut scene. On-screen text reads “What do you think? Tweet us @themacweekly”. Credits begin rolling.]

This video and transcript were produced by Hannah Catlin (News Editor) and Margaret Moran (Associate News Editor). Want to learn more about 1661 Grand? Check out our article “Will Macalester require a 3-year residency”.