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The red wooden building housing the Inn Complete has served many purposes. It was once Syracuse University’s ski lodge, where students could ski right into the building and come upstairs to eat. Years later, it became SU’s only university-owned bar, a respite for graduate students at the end of long weeks until its closure in 2020.

“We have pictures from the ‘40s of people gathering here, used to be a ski lodge,” said Claire O’Boyle Downey, the Director of Catering for Food Services at SU. “People would ski into (the lodge), into that space, lock up their things and then come upstairs.”

After a multi-year renovation, the Inn Complete returned to campus as a restaurant and event space on Monday, adding a new option to the university’s dining landscape. Catering supervisor Nikki Alic said that the Inn is unique from SU’s other meal options because of its atmosphere.

“It is definitely a cool space. It’s homey, it’s got a fireplace, we’ve got a game space upstairs, and it’s kind of just calm,” Alic said.

Originally used as a barn, the building was renovated to become a ski lodge in 1947. The lodge included a snack bar, classroom and a 30-meter ski jump. It served as a hub for the university’s ski team for decades until the construction of new student apartments on South Campus rendered the lodge inactive.

In 1987, the first version of the Inn Complete opened on Farm Acre Rd. at Skybarn, near the lodge. It became popular as a bar for graduate students to gather, along with faculty, staff and others who preferred to drink away from the Marshall Street bars. The bar was moved to the vacant ski lodge in 1994, where it remained until it closed.

Just like the lodge before it, the Inn Complete bar was pushed out by the housing needs of South Campus. As the university began to use South Campus to house more and more of its undergraduates, the graduate student population that once sustained the Inn Complete was diluted.

After its closure, the space was used occasionally by the university for private events. However, there was no daily service to the community, particularly South Campus residents, who only had one other local dining option, the Goldstein Student Center.

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“We would book events we would have there, a conference here or a dinner or a cocktail hour or something like that. And that’s all it’s been used for the last couple of years,” O’Boyle Downey said. “So now we’re reopening it.”

The building’s renovations added air conditioning and improved the outdoor patio area. The Inn also installed new TVs to host game day parties. The Inn held their first of these events, a pregame for Saturday’s football game against Western Michigan, on Sept. 9.

An all-you-can-eat lunch buffet offers guests sandwiches, soups, daily hot entrees, and desserts. The price of the buffet is $16.50 and includes drinks. Students are able to play with meal swipes, Dining Dollars or ‘Cuse Cash, as well as credit or debit cards.

The Inn is only open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily for lunch, but O’Boyle Downey said there are plans to eventually open for dinner.

“Our goal was to open the doors, get the community involved, and the buffet is definitely a good way to do it,” O’Boyle Downey said. “Somewhere around spring break, we would potentially start evening service.”

While the new version of the Inn Complete is no longer intended for graduate students, it still has traces of its past as a college bar. The second floor is home to a game room with pool, foosball and ping pong tables.

Before it became a ski lodge in 1947, the Inn Complete was just a barn. Since then, the building has housed a bar and is now a buffet-style dining option for students.
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Becki Bruzdzinski, the associate director of operations for the Office of Student Engagement, visited the Inn on opening day. She said that she had been to the Inn when it was still a bar and was excited to return to see its new form.

“This feels more like a regular restaurant,” Bruzdzinski said. “This is much more how you’d go to any sort of independent restaurant in the area and have that same experience but without having to leave campus.”

Scott Casanova, the associate director of event and technical services for the Office of Student Engagement, had lunch with Bruzdzinski and noted that it was good to have another restaurant-style meal option on campus, especially for faculty since the Goldstein Alumni and Faculty Center stopped serving daily lunch.

“It’s a nice change of pace,” Casanova said. “You can go to Subway every day on Marshall Street, and Schine Dining, and students are going to (dining halls) like every day. It’s a chance to go somewhere else, do something different.”

Published on September 11, 2023 at 10:44 pm