After nearly one year of ironing out wrinkles in the model, construction on a $500,000 kitchen to serve both," Kirkland and Eliot Houses will begin May 1, officials said this week.

The kitchen, which will be constructed between the two adjacent Houses, will open up more dining space in each House by moving stated and refreshment machines into area now used for food preparation.

Food Line To Move

In addition, the plan will move the line of student in Kirkland waiting for food from the dining area into what is now the kitchen.

Funding for new structure will come from the dining hall budgets.

Although the new structure will reduce the size of the kitchen staff needed to feed the 700 students living in the two Houses, the College will not lay off workers, said Thomas R. Quinn, associate dean of the College for facilities. Instead, he added, the College will not hire replacement for workers who leave.

In the meantime, extra workers will be reassigned throughout the other three College dining halls--Winthrop, Leverett and Lowell--which share a large central kitchen with Kirkland and Eliot.

This will continue to prepare all the food for the five Houses but the new building will combine the final preparation and cleaning functions now duplicated in small Kirkland and Eliot kitchens, Richard Montyille, director of the live dining halls said in December.

While the education in employees will be a financial benefit, the move was not originally intended to cut costs, officials said this week.

"Consolidating the staff was a good excuse to do what we really wanted, which was to do something about the Kirkland dining room," Quinn explained.

Kirkland Master Donald H. Pfister said he's pleased with the plan, which had been one of his suggested changes when the House was being renovated nearly one year ago.

Pfister added that dining hall operations will not be affected by the reading-period construction.

The much-travelled narrow stairway between Kirkland and Eliot, which cuts considerable time off the trip to the athletic facilities across the River, willremam, Quinn said.