This semester’s Club Fest was relocated to the Kimmel Center for University Life due to a flood in the Paulson Center, where Friday’s event was scheduled to take place. 

NYU announced the change at 5 p.m. on Thursday in a universitywide campus advisory message, following the burst of a drinking water pipe in the Paulson Center that morning. Students registered for Club Fest — a biannual event where student organizations present informational booths, inviting students to join — were informed of the change in location about an hour ahead of the university’s public notice. 

In its initial message to students at around noon yesterday, NYU said that damage from the burst pipe was “quickly contained” and anticipated that the Paulson Center would still be able to host the Club Fest the next day. 

The pool area, wrestling room area and basketball courts in the Paulson Center’s athletics facility were closed “until further notice,” as displayed in a notice on the building’s website. Tisch junior Jose Romero, a resident assistant at the Paulson Center who works at the athletics facility, said that only the first floor was open to the public and parts of the ceiling were noticeably damaged and dripping water. 

“Downstairs, it was like hell — all the facilities on the cellar and subcellar levels closed for the whole day,” Romero said in an interview with WSN. “The wrestling team had to pull out the competition mats into one of the other courts and practice in there, and the volleyball team had one less court than they usually do because it was messed up.” 

Romero said that although the lower-level lockers were also flooded, they were still accessible for students and athletes.  

He added that the water in the Paulson Center, which was shut off early Thursday morning, was available at around 8:30 a.m. Gallatin first-year Noelia Salinetti, a Paulson resident, also told WSN that the water in her dorm was brown for over an hour after it was restored. 

NYU Eats told students that Crave NYU, a dining hall in the Paulson Center, would open late due to a maintenance issue in a 10:30 a.m. email on Thursday. At around 1:45 p.m., the university informed students that Crave NYU would reopen at 2:15 p.m.

Contact Aashna Miharia at [email protected].