Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Did You Know?

Short post today because of studying/Halloween.

Did you know... Heritage Park has a "Reflection Garden?" It's technically a monument to faculty and staff (nice touch) but also creates a peaceful space for students to relax...                     (all pictures mine)



I've never seen anyone relax here but theoretically it's possible :D I like Heritage Park and I wish it could be expanded - maybe the new shade trees by IRT are part of that.

Moving on...

Did you know... the Engineering building (the old one) has a hallway with various student projects hanging from the ceiling? It's pretty cool and I wish we showed off student work more often (hence the Student Innovation Gallery post). On the end there in red is the human-powered submarine (or an early model anyway). I believe it's called the Talon-1 and you have to crawl in there to propel it yourself. They won awards with that submarine a few years back. Read more about that sub (and the club that built it) here.



Wonder what will become of them when Engineering finally moves out of the building and into the new building.

Did you know... the Owl sculpture outside the Alumni Office is actually the wiring for a topiary, meaning a bush shaped like something (remember Edward Scissorhands?). Here's how the topiary looked during Homecoming Week... slowly but surely crawling up the frame. You might have noticed that plants are growing up some of the stadium framework (as intended) too.


You probably knew that the bookstore is actually owned by Barnes & Nobles, which means they make the decision as to how it looks, but did you know they're considering moving to Innovation Village? A couple years ago, a manager told me they were considering moving there and this space could become a bookstore for trade books (e.g. normal books). That might be interesting.

Anyway, at least they did a good interior renovation and worked in the FAU colors everywhere.



Going to end with a shot of the new Night Owls wrapping on the carts because, quite frankly, not sure where else to put it. But I must commend Student Government for injecting so much FAU spirit into everything and hope they continue to do so.

 
As a side note, a friend of mine worked for Night Owls a few years back and I got to do a "ride along" with her to keep her company. The things that students want you to do for them are pretty ridiculous. Some people want to be picked up from HPT to get a ride to the cafe. I don't mean frail, good looking women in the dark... I mean tall, muscular dudes. One guy wanted us to drive him from IRT to the gas station across Glades so he could get Subway (for those who didn't know, that weird sub shop there used to be an official Subway). And we took a handful of people home that kept asking us to stop so they could "holla at this girl."

To the current students: if you know somebody working for Night Owls, see if you can ride with them one night because it's pretty funny. To the alumni: sorry you missed out. But now you know what goes on there.

GO OWLS!

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Let's Talk About Airport Road

Airport Road has the advantage of being parallel to I-95, making it a highly attractive space to developers who know their signage could be seen by a tens of thousands of drivers every single day.

The airport itself actually owns all the vacant land along its space, a fact I learned when the airport sought proposals for the vacant land that eventually became the gaudy City Furniture (wish it would have been an IKEA). Incidentally, the runner-up for that piece of property, iPic, still settled in Boca Raton at Mizner Park and is doing very well there, albeit as a a movie theater rather than as the full entertainment complex that would have included movies and a bowling alley.

All's well that ends well, eh? One of the reasons why City Furniture was chosen was because it claimed to have peak traffic during the day versus Cinemark, which had peak traffic at night. Representatives for the City of Boca Raton were concerned that having iPic there would generate too much traffic, a problem they were already contending with along Glades Road.

Obviously I'm not a traffic engineer but I think they were playing it conservative. I agree with one of the proposal committee members who argued for iPic because "Airport Road is for entertainment", citing Boomers and Cinemark. I'm going to jump on that train and talk about a couple of things I'd like to see there.

First, let's start with the following picture:


The dotted red line represents a bike trail that could be built to join FAU with Airport Road. There exists a bike trail now called the El Rio bike trail that connects the eastern edge of campus to Yamato Road, but this trail would be more shaded and give people a second option for biking. It would also give students an easier way of accessing Airport Road attractions without a car.

Bicycle path in New Jersey courtesy of Wikipedia.

The yellow polygon on the map represents the "overflow" parking lot at Boomers that is never used because there is never overflow parking at Boomers. This creates, at least in my mind, a potential space for an entertainment venue or a restaurant there (while still preserving some of the parking lot to service that attraction). It may not seem like a lot of space but take a look again at the size of the Boomers building in relation to the parking lot in question and you'll see it's actually a decent amount of space.

So what should go there? Several thoughts come to mind...

Thanks Wikipedia.
or what about a large scale stage illusions (Magic Show) Dinner Theater? You pay $40-50/person for a great dinner and illusions for an hour. That would make a great compliment to Cinemark. It would just have weekend shows and could also double as a "magic school" during the day, something that may already be drumming up interest in Boca Raton now.

Or maybe even one of those fancy, hip new bowling alleys like Strike (see picture) in Sydney or Splitsville... everywhere.

Obviously a better situation would be an FAU-themed bowling alley as the primary bowling alley in Boca Raton - since we only have one now and it's rumored to be torn down when its lease is up - but hey, a nice bowling alley is a nice bowling alley. Students can still enjoy full screens and fancy sofas and great food, which is apparently the new trend in bowling alleys.

After all, Boca Raton prides itself on being a little bit better than other places. It has an award-winning upscale mall in Town Centre. It has million dollar homes and $100+/plate restaurants. It even has an upscale cemetery, for crying out loud.

So why not great entertainment? I'm not saying you have to pay $20/game to go bowling, as the game prices are still reasonable even if the bowling alley is better than anything you've ever seen. I'm just saying that Boca has the ability to attract the best things because of the college students (with expendable income), the wealthy retirees (with expendable income) in a city known to spend money (hence the number of fancy stores all over Boca Raton). We're lucky in this way and Boca could play it up. Not saying Boca has to become Orlando. We're just talking about a couple of attractions here

Hopefully City Furniture will fail so they could bring in another attraction :D  Maybe the new bowling alley could take over City Furniture and the SkyVenture/Magic Theater could take over the Boomers extra parking lot... dare to dream.

For what it's worth the City is seeking out RFPs (request for proposals) for entertainment/restaurant space on Spanish River Blvd next to the new library. Any of these ideas could also work over there and really the only disadvantage is that it's a little further away from campus. Not much, at all, but far enough away where a bike trail couldn't take you there. Can't wait to see what those RFPs turn up; the original ideas included an ice skating rink and a Dave & Busters, though those plans were put on hold for a number of reasons including an uncertain economy.

 Any attraction within 3-5 minutes drive of FAU is still a win in my book. 

GO OWLS!

Monday, October 29, 2012

It's the Little Things

The story goes that when FAU President Anthony Catanese (1990-2002) first arrived at FAU, the thing that bothered him most was the view of campus itself. "One of the reasons I almost didn't come here was there were no trees," Catanese told the Sun Sentinel. "It was barren, and I thought if a place doesn't look good, why would you want to go there?"

It's a good point, even though it doesn't sound like such a big deal. You're here for an education, right, you're not here for trees. But little things like that can have a big effect on a person's happiness and their perception of an institution as a "right fit." Some universities know this, which is why they try to frame pictures like this and put it on their webpages.

You may not care about trees or flowers but subconsciously you care when they're not there. Fortunately, Catanese doubled the number of trees on campus during his tenure, bringing us the variety of oaks, palms and even the huge banyan trees that now mark the Campus Green (have we ever considered naming those big banyan trees? Give them a name and have a ceremonial sign planted nearby, so students are inspired to "take care of our trees").

Additionally, FAU is interested in pushing forward with more flowering plants and we've started to see that pop up here and there. Over time, the campus should become even nicer, integrating concrete planters to prevent students from walking or biking through the gardens. This works twofold since it provide more much needed outdoor seating as well. Students themselves have begun adding to the botanical wealth, as small gardens have popper up by GPT and IRT, where students can go out and work on the garden.

Honestly, I'd like to see what could be done with a landscape architect and a considerable budget. There are a lot of cool things you can do with plants and gardens:

For instance, the University of Southern California (USC) uses bushes to spell out their name in front of the library. Thanks Wikipedia.

What about a small orange grove on campus, where students could grow and pick oranges? We're Florida Atlantic University, after all, and a lot of students come here from out-of-state for the "Florida lifestyle"... so why not play it up? It could be fenced in and monitored. It would definitely be unique.

What if we had painted trees near the Visual Arts complex?

According to FAU library's Digital Records collection, a reflecting pool was originally envisioned for the east side of the Breezeway by the library:

There was even an initiative to create "themed gazebos" for each individual college that would be placed by the building where most of the classes were. That could be interesting - would that mean the Engineering gazebo would have moving parts?

Anyway...

Making FAU feel like a "real college" to people was about more than just adding trees, of course. A big part of it was injecting spirit. Years ago I put together a proposal for campus banners on the streetlights. I even went out, on foot, and counted all the poles that could serve as hosts for the project. The banner project was originally viewed with some hesitance due to cost, though everyone agreed we needed to push forward on it. Two SGA administrations later and bam, the banners went up. First they went up on Lee Street (now North University), then along Diversity Way, then in the housing area themselves and finally, perhaps most importantly, out along Glades Road. Even though people were concerned that Boca was going to take offense to this, the City Council was actually very supportive, going out of their way to amend sign codes to allow it to happen. Their only stipulation was that we did it tastefully, which we have.

Speaking of Glades Road, I heard a rumor that Saunders was interested in getting "GO OWLS" painted on the two water towers along the north side of Glades Road before you get to campus... that may be a little harder sell but I'm all for it.

So we added trees, we added flowers, we added banners, we put in red brick pavers (a 'classic' college look) in various sidewalks and footbridges, we've incorporated more red and blue into our color schemes (Student Union, GS, the pre-health office in S&E, etc) and we put up the Owl heads on both ends of the Breezeway. The bronze Schnellenberger statue went up in the stadium, I believe another one is on its way at the Sean Stein Pavillion, and there is an SGA plan for a replica of Schnellenberger's stump. A clock and fountain went up near the bookstore, creating Traditions Plaza.

All good things.

We went from being a "barren" wasteland with ugly pastel buildings to being a vibrant college atmosphere. We're still playing "catch-up" to older institutions but potential students and their parents are now taking tours and coming away impressed. They say we have a beautiful campus. They can feel our progress, our ambition, and out pride. It's there. It's palpable. And as long as we continue to build on the little things, we can do even bigger things in the future.

GO OWLS!

Friday, October 26, 2012

Humble Beginnings of University Boulevard

Right now 20th Street is a dead zone desperately trying to maintain its status as Boca's "center" for industry. Fabric stores, bike shops, storerooms and warehouses intermingle with empty buildings and empty plazas. It's been difficult to attract entrepreneurs to the space.

However, as FAU grows in size, there has been a shift towards promoting more college-centric business in the area. For instance, the "official off-campus bookstore", Booksmart, has moved from their Glades location across campus to new digs on 20th Street. The owners see it as a win-win situation, noting that they save more money on the monthly lease payment here and should get more foot traffic since a new student housing project (University Park) will be opening at 20th Street and Dixie. Furthermore, "everyone knows 20th Street because it's the main route to Publix." They're right: the majority of FAU students get their groceries from the Publix in the 5th Avenue Shops and 20th Street gets you there, so any interesting development along 20th Street should get their attention.

Here's a shot of their new building (all pictures mine):


And the inside should be pretty familiar. The long rectangular space is only half-filled right now until the lease comes up on their used bookstore, Bookwise, on Spanish River Blvd. At that point the used bookstore will take up the other half of the store, doubling the "use" of the space since most of Booksmart's business comes in the first month of the new semester and everything slows down from there. Bringing in Bookwise is a great move.


For what it's worth, their stock is exclusively FAU stuff - no Lynn or PBSC spirit apparel that I could find. And though they have the usual FAU shirt designs, these were new to me:


Across the street there's an old plaza that's been held up primarily by traffic to the Nakava Bar, arguably one of Boca's "student bars." However, there haven't been many other vendors in the space - I think it's been home to a small convenience store, dry cleaners, that sort of thing. But recently more and more stores have opened up in there, from an FAU grad's Go Greek apparel store...



...to Rita's Pitas, a corner restaurant giving FAU student discounts, to the Hook Up and University Chill.


Although you can argue that these kind of developments appeal to all ages, I think names like "University Chill" send a pretty clear message about what sort of people they are trying to attract. And this is fantastic, if you think about it, because people really get the sense of being in a "college town" when they're driving around and seeing names like "University Park", "University Chill" and even a Red and Blue Owl in the logo of your new bar, The Night Owl (previously "T.J. Murphy's Bar & Grill" and currently under construction)

EDIT 3/23/13: University Chill lasted less than 3 months before shuttering and is now a vacant space. Night Owl is now open and considered by many undergrads as the top college bar in Boca Raton.

 
The Night Owl will be located over by Cannoli Kitchen on the northwestern side of the intersection at 20th Street and Federal Highway.

So this is a nice start and hopefully students know about these businesses and patronize them frequently enough to keep them open and promote this kind of growth in the area. The City certainly wants it, as they're in the process of renaming 20th Street to "University Boulevard" by establishing a new "overlay district." Basically what that means is that the area would be rezoned to encourage FAU-centric growth along 20th Street from campus all the way east to Dixie Highway. And maybe even more. "If it's successful," a Boca Raton staff member noted, "we could extend it all the way to Federal Highway."

Right now the city is waiting on a Treasure Coast-based development group to give them an analysis of the area and what it could possibly look like. I think the idea would basically either be a strip of storefronts, like the ones referenced in the above pictures, or preferably do "mixed-use" developments with stores on the bottom and student housing above it. After all, people are more likely to patronize businesses where they live and that brings more students close enough to campus to catch a shuttle or ride a bike, thus reducing traffic around campus and freeing up parking spots for people who do have to drive to campus.

Here's an example rendering in case you're a little fuzzy on the idea of mixed-use development.

I think it's pretty clear why this would be a good thing for FAU and I'm ecstatic to see the City pushing this forward. Understand that once 20th Street becomes University Boulevard we'd still need developers to step up to the plate, buy into the vision and get the ball rolling. This could take a while. It could very well take 5-10 years. And depending on how the development goes, it may require the current businesses above to relocate to these new retail spaces.

So what would we want there? Well, at least four or five more student bars - electronic bars, country bars, sports bars, piano bars, indie bars, nothing upscale (because they don't last) - would be high on the list to create a nightlife area for students.

For other entertainment, a University Billiards, blacklight (indoor) golf, maybe an FAU art gallery?

For retail, stores like Urban Outfitters, Gamestop and cell phone stores like MetroPCS.

For food we could have SandwichU, Chick-fil-a, Buffalo Wild Wings, Saladworks, FROOTS, Sonic, 100 Montaditos ("everything's $1 on Wednesdays" sounds like the right price for students), Steak'n'Shake, Jimmy Johns, a vegetarian place, ethnic places like Indian and Latin American food, sushi...

And hey, maybe relocate local faves like Hotdogopolis, Funky Buddah and 620Subs over here (or open a second location)

This could be a really great place if they do it right. Let's hope they do! Have a great weekend.

GO OWLS!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Past Explorations for Future Developments

Over the years FAU has commissioned studies, solicited renderings and plotted out space for future facilities. Now, things rarely go as planned because of funding issues, changes in student and faculty needs, or someone like the Toppel family shows up and donates $3M to build the (eventual) Toppel Early Education Center. As a result, the university's development is very dynamic and it can feel at times like we've all got a different idea of how FAU should be.

Of course at the end of the day it's University Architect Tom Donaudy or President Saunders who get the final say on what is being where and when. Still, I thought it would be interesting to look at some ideas that the university has yet to implement - and may not, who knows - but at least it gives you an idea of what they've been thinking about.

As mentioned yesterday (and several times before), FAU will be building Parking Garage 3 and the next phase of the Innovation Village on the north end of campus, just west of the stadium. It will eat into the Preserve, despite the presence of the Tortuga Trail, angry biologists and various wildlife. It's just an inevitability. The "good" news is that the university is planning a "trade": once the Innovation Village build-out is complete, the plan is to eliminate Lot 5 and "return it to the wild." If that idea holds up then that space will all become preserve again, which in a way is good because it consolidates people into the campus core so no one has to park way out there and complain about how far they have to walk around the stadium to get to class.

Speaking of green space, it is part of the Landscaping Master Plan (I'll give you the link but trust me, nothing to see there that I'm not already showing you here) to keep the "Campus Green" as "the image and place-making landscape icon for the Campus. The Campus Green shall be the formal and ceremonial open space which is sacrosanct and inviolate."  (Picture below is from the above link)


Hopefully you recognize the Spaceship (SO) building on the right side there and thus can place the others. This plan has more or less been accomplished with the exception of the row of oaks and the Carillon.

Don't know what a Carillon is? I didn't either. Know what a belltower is? Exactly.

The Cook Carillon Tower at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Gotta admit they did a pretty awesome job. Thanks Wikipedia.

Now, we may have nixed that idea since we put in fake bells at the PA building. But uh, yeah, we could do better. And there's still space! If you uproot the tree/bush planting in the very heart of Alumni Plaza, you could still put a Carillon there. Then again, the Alumni Center probably wants their Lighthouse thing to be the dominant "tower" on campus, so... there's that. I guess we could build a bigger Lighthouse? Because budget considerations trimmed it down from its original height and glory anyway...

Whatever. They'll sort it out. Let's move on.

Once the College of Engineering moves over entirely into the new Engineering building (which it doesn't look like they've done yet), then the "service yard" where they work on watercraft is due to get an auditorium expansion in preparation for redoing the space as General Classroom Space (as we talked about before).

See, I told you. The red arrow never lies. Also, I added the red arrow.

The existing Administration building will probably become the new Student Union (although I talked to someone at the SU who said she didn't know about that but she heard they were thinking about renovating the existing Union by adding a second floor to the Live Oak and a building out by the outdoor fields. Not sure how I feel about this).

Let's say the renovation doesn't happen and instead we change the old Admin into the new SU. Once you do that, you create a major interface point for public transit. The LRTP 2030 (Long-Range Transportation Plan) plan shows an "Intermodal Center" at the Admin building loop there, which presumably then links up with proposed Rapid Bus Transit (RBT) that goes east-west on Glades (as we talked about previously).

You can read about Miami's very cool (and very expensive) forthcoming Intermodal Center here but don't think for one second that we'd qualify for the same thing. As cool as it would be to even have something like this on campus we're probably just going to have a large covered structure outside the Student Union that allows people to get on and off buses and shuttles. And that's all FAU needs, even if it balloons out to 50-60k students two or three decades from now.

I really love the lighting in that photo though. Looks futuristic. That we could afford.

GO OWLS!

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

FAU Campus Project Updates: Statues, Expansions and Amphitheaters

Here are some of the things that we know FAU is working on:

The new dorm "skeleton" is still progressing along but the main walls have not been added yet, so it wasn't worth adding another picture yet. We'll see where they're at next week.

Parking Garage 3 is scheduled to break ground in January, but for now they're making design tweaks. Design Development is due in early November. If I find any new renderings once that's complete, I'll post them here.

Planning and Design for the Baseball Stadium Renovation was revived on August 1st - thinking what happened here is that new FAU Athletic Director Pat Chun wants to take a swing at looking for new funding opportunities for this. As it stands, this wouldn't be the massive $10M full-scale renovation they'd like to do (see picture below) but rather a multiphase operation that would add a new facade, bathrooms, vending space and some of the same kind multicolored pylons that are in front of The Burrow. Previously the overall budget was set at $726,650 (with Athletics contributing 65% of that cost and Facilities making up the rest) but that might have changed with a new Athletics Director. Time will tell, although everyone agrees that FAU's winningest team deserves better - something like this.

The small, cross-shaped courtyard on the south side of the Business building, the Sean Stein Pavilion, is due to get a statue of late FAU business student Sean Stein - I assume it will be bronze like the $80K bronze Schnellenberger statue inside the stadium. This should commence soon... just waiting on the Construction Manager to get permitted.

Speaking of Schnellenberger, Student Government is funding a $5,000 "replica of Coach Schnellenberger's stump used to recruit players." See, when Coach Schnellenberger first got on campus, we obviously didn't have a football team and he would draw attention to himself in public places like the Breezeway by bringing this old stump and standing on it, shouting out for recruits to anyone who would listen.

The stump will join a $5,000 (also from SGA) plaque to honor former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's October 1964 dedication of FAU.

"Democracy Plaza", which is apparently a thing and located on the east side of the new Culture & Society building, is slated to get a new large-scale sculpture for approximately $30K. Each building must have (I think by law, or maybe it's just FAU policy) some small appropriation in its overall construction budget to fund an outdoor sculpture to help "define" the building and further the arts. Let's hope this one is good, as FAU has spent a ridiculous amount of money on bad art  in the past.

The Centre Marketplace ("the Caff") is getting a $2M expansion and renovation, which they've already started. Not sure what's going in there yet; it may just be to extend floor space and/or add enclosed outdoor seating like they used to have. Fencing has gone up around the southwest side of the building, construction vehicles are on-site, but nothing has really happened yet to show you.

A UCONN-style Greek Amphitheater has been proposed for the pond area south of GPT. It would house a number of Greek studies programs and outdoor performances. Still, they were thinking it was going to cost $2.5M and now the construction budget estimate came back at a (potentially prohibitively high) figure of  $9M. Ouch. That's almost as much as a new parking garage. But hey, it'd be a beaut, wouldn't it?

What with the closure of Treasure Coast and Ft. Lauderdale campuses, some departments have to be shifted around. The School of Urban & Regional Planning is looking to be consolidated on the Boca Raton campus and the School of Graphic Design & Multimedia is likely going south to the Davie campus.

Athletics is looking for a company to develop a "Master Plan for Northern Area of Athletic Campus." Not entirely sure which "northern" are they're referring to, whether it's the area around the Oxley/softball/track fields or whether they are referencing the Innovation Village, although if it was the latter you'd think it would specifically designate the IV area. This is the most recent thing I had seen:




This plan can obviously change, and probably will, but for now notice the new road running from the west side of the Burrow all the way up and around to the new housing. Also notice that the grass Olympic training field west of the track would become a new parking lot to make up for the loss of parking spaces taken by the Burrow Expansion. Also notice that a southeastern Oxley expansion would take up the baseball practice field as well.

And, last but not least, the Memory & Wellness Center, a center for Alzheimer's and other degnerative brain disease research back by the Traffic & Parking office, is slated fro a $30K addition soon. Basically it's an addition behind the building.

Guess that's it for now. Take it easy.

GO OWLS!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Walking the Tortuga Trail

As you may know, preserving the "scrubland" area on the northwest side of campus has been the subject of much debate. Essentially the issue is that the biology and ecology clubs (with faculty support) have been trying to "Save The Preserve" because it's home to box turtles, raccoons and various types of birds and thus also doubles as an on-campus nature research area. However, FAU has already begun to eat in that space with the football stadium and the forthcoming Parking Garage 3 and has earmarked space north of the track'n'field for Innovation Village Apartments Phase 2/Greek Housing.

To help people better understand the Preserve, FAU club S.E.E.D.S. (Strategies for Ecology Education Diversity and Sustainability) has constructed the "Tortuga Trail" through the Preserve and honestly, they've done a pretty good job. As a nature trail fan, I'm very happy to see this and think it could still be preserved even when the Innovation Village build-out is complete. As it stands, the longest path takes about a half hour to walk but there are a couple diverting paths throughout. Here's the main idea:


Picture courtesy of SEEDS@FAU blog.

And here are some of my pictures from the trail:

Entrance from North University. The club has cut down palm trees and used pieces of the trunks to frame the path.
Coyotes? What?

There were blue, red and green trails.

Deeper into the Preserve it gets a little more shaded.

Various totems were along the path with student organization names.

A swing along the trail.

Additionally, SEEDS has been holding a "Trail of Terror" event during Halloween week where students walk the trail as "monsters" (SEEDS volunteers) jump out to scare you - an AWESOME idea  Program Board is working with them and hopefully this will grow that into a large-scale event.



In case you can't read it (the font is fancy!), this year's Trail of Terror is scheduled for October 26th (this Friday!), 30th and 31st from 7-10 pm. Looks like you enter from the parking lot north of the stadium.

                                                                  GO OWLS!

Monday, October 22, 2012

Bringing Out the Owlumni

It's Homecoming Week at FAU, aka "Owl Prowl," which encourages the university's 121,000+ alumni to reconnect with their alma mater. Of those 121k there are 94,145 in Florida with 34,884 in Palm Beach county alone - so you would think we wouldn't have a problem getting people out to these events if FAU is still in everyone's backyard.

As you can see on the Homecoming website, we begin with... community service opportunities, which are incredibly important to the communities they serve, yes, and can be great fun building a house with your friends, yes, but it doesn't start off an exciting week with a bang. Community Service can fill up the early part of Opening Day for Owl Prowl, but when the sun goes down there needs to be a real flashy, high draw event to kick off Homecoming Week the right way. There's technically a "Homecoming Kick-off" on Monday, which is weird since the Homecoming events start on the Saturday beforehand...

Yesterday FAU held their Homecoming 5K Run/Walk to benefit autism. Admittedly I was a little skeptical of this event back when I served on the Homecoming Committee and totally underestimated how many people are interested in runs these days. In fact, I had two friends (who are grad students at FAU) run both the FAU 5K and the hugely-popular Color Run in Miami.

For those who wonder what the deuce is going on there, it's basically a race where runners pass through different "color zones" and have different colored food grade cornstarch powder thrown on them (it washes out easily, don't worry). People love it, and considering how many students loved the Freshman Foam Party (where they got equally messy in dayglo paint) perhaps FAU would consider doing the Homecoming 5K as a Red and Blue "Color Run" 5K where they could get covered in red, blue and gray colors along the way! That would definitely bring more people out and inject more "school spirit" into the event.

During the week the Owl Prowl kicks into more "high profile" events:

  • Monday's Carnivowl (a carnival before Friday's big carnival, the Fall Family Fest...), Owl Hunt (a fun event where students race around campus looking for Owl heads) and (this year) a Presidential Debate Watch Party in the stadium (great idea, BTW). 
  • Tuesday's big events are the Canned Food Sculpture Contest (occasionally interesting, and the cans get donated to the hungry afterwards, so that's a good thing) and the Timucua Pageant, a talent show and one of FAU's oft-forgotten traditions. It used to be an independent event but now it's been rolled in with Homecoming.
  • Wednesday's big event is the Homecoming Comedy Show featuring Ralphie May, who's kinda famous, I guess. I guess that's the draw there.
  • Thursday's Talon Awards historically draws the most alumni, boosters and administrators for a fancy-ish gala atmosphere. For the regular students, the big event on Thursday is the Homecoming Concert, this year featuring Pepper and The Supervillains... which is apparently some sort of a reggae/ska thing. Enjoy it because the concert budget was doubled from $15,000 to $30,000 to bring in the "greatest homecoming concert to date." I once asked the Program Board how much it would cost to get a "Dave Matthews" type of headliner and they estimated over $100K, if that answers any "Why can't we get ________ to play at FAU?" questions. Homecoming's total budget is $196,500, which you can see in the 2012-2013 SGA budget here.
  • Friday is the Homecoming Parade and the Fall Family Fest and is, in my opinion, the best day of events before the game. The Homecoming Parade doesn't draw a lot of people from the community when it should - not sure they advertise for it - and that's a damn shame because people put a lot of effort into the floats. Fall Family Fest is awesome, from the bonfire to the carnival attractions, and really the only thing that would make it better would be to significantly enlarge it, perhaps into the "campus green" (the "protected" grassy quad that stretches from Arts+Letters to Physical Sciences).
  • Saturday is the home football game against Troy, for better or worse. In years past this would have been a great draw since Troy was leading the conference and we had gunslinger Rusty Smith to help us upset them. That said, the football team will eventually get better and this will be the centerpiece of the Homecoming Week, especially if we can get a name brand team to play us at home here. Not going to go deep into FAU sports talk here as that's not the purpose of this blog, but we all know that this event is supposed to be THE tentpole event and thus the biggest draw of the entire week. 
  • And after the game, well, I guess that's it. No Homecoming Outro for us. We used to have a dance or a post-Homecoming brunch but over the years they kept getting dropped and re-added, dropped and revised, and now I guess it's just dropped in general. Speaking of dropped events: there used to be a pre-Homecoming Window Painting Competition that was really awesome... until people realized that no one really wanted to clean it off afterwards, so that got nixed.

Now, I know you could have just visited the Homecoming website link I provided and found out all about this yourself. But I wanted to tell you a little about these events because, fact is, this is actually one of the best Homecoming calendars I've ever seen at this school. In the past, we had to choose between a comedy show or a concert, this year we get both, and if you count the Homecoming with Hardwell show off-campus, we actually get three performance events. Additionally we get two carnivals, even though Carnivowls have historically been one of those kind of events where you can see and do everything in all of five or ten minutes... so there's that.

The downsides, like I said, are that we start off slow (no big flashy start), there's no Greek Event (e.g. a "Greekstravaganza") probably because they do everything during Greek Week, the comedy selections are sometimes duds and there's no real outro. But let's remember that the Homecoming Committee doesn't have a lot of money and has to spread their budget out across an entire week's worth of events - not to mention there are a ton of costs you probably don't think about such as security for the concerts/comedy shows.

Some universities get around limited funds either by increasing their Homecoming budget through SGA appropriations or by actively seeking out corporate sponsorship in the communities. Program Board has made the Homecoming Committee aware that they could get bigger, more expensive acts to play here if they charged for tickets (say $15 or $25/person) but they're always sensitive to the fact that students either may not show up in numbers needed to cover the cost or they'll pitch a fit that they have to pay to see an act when they've "already paid" in A&S fees. It's a valid argument, but the reality is that if you want to see a Louis C.K. at FAU, you're going to have to pay a little bit more.

If we had some more money - let's imagine we had $500k for Homecoming because we're somehow awesome rich like that - then I'd like to see some of the following things (besides the Blue/Red Color Run) added to the slate:

- A great kickoff event. I'm thinking a fireworks show at the stadium on the first night of Owl Prowl. Alternatively, this could end Homecoming Week. This is the kind of thing that signals "yes, something important is going on over here" to the whole community.
- Large scale decoration effort on campus. Nobody should come to campus this week and not know it's Homecoming Week.
- Have a steel drum band/performance artists out in front of SO on the Free Speech lawn, a new act every day.
- Get a thousand red and blue balloons, blow them up, and have students release them at the same time. Do it about 5 pm on Monday while people on Glades are waiting in traffic and look over to see this flurry of balloons coming off campus.
- A "meet the owls" wildlife show at the Barry Kaye Auditorium with birds and other exotic animals.
- Bring in a famous speaker(s) like Neil Degrasse Tyson, Penn & Teller or Kevin Smith.
- Consider moving Owl Madness to Homecoming Week.
- Instead of paying for a few carnival-type attractions to come to campus, pay for an entire carnival to come to campus, like churches do. Invite the community and give the community a discount on admission if they're wearing an FAU shirt. This could be the "enhanced" Fall Family Festival.
- Do a "Taste of Boca" type event with local restauranteurs setting up in the concourse of the stadium. This could be a pay-for-admission type of event. Could call it the FAU FOOD FESTIVAL.
- Create a Giant "Good Luck" Card for the players. Have it out on the Breezeway so students can sign it. SGA can deliver it on Saturday before the game.
- "Owlumni Connect", a social networking event of alumni looking to hire FAU grads - and FAU grads looking for jobs!

That's all I can think of for now. It's getting late - time to post this!

 GO OWLS!


Friday, October 19, 2012

Random Thoughts for Friday

Thought I'd throw together a couple things which are probably not substantive enough to get their own entry. Here we go...

SMART GARAGE?


As you may have noticed, both the Sun Sentinel and the University Press covered yesterday's decision by FAU's Board of Trustees to approve Parking Garage 3, which now needs to go before the Florida Board of Governors. I don't see any reason why the BOG would turn this down so expect a groundbreaking in January 2013. For more information about the project, check about my original post on PG3 here.

Something that is not requested in the construction document is the implementation as a "smart garage." I'm not sure why FAU hasn't caught on to this idea yet, even if it comes at an added expense, because the most infuriating part of garages is wasted time circling each level looking for spots. Furthermore, both UF and UM (at least, and there are probably others) have had this system going for a couple years now.

For those who don't know, "smart garages" usually work by lasers (sometimes by pressure plates too). At the most basic level, entering cars trip a laser which subtracts a parking space from a computer tally of available spaces while exiting cars trip another laser which adds a space back to that tally. The overall space tally is displayed prominently on an electronic board outside the entry, thus letting you know how many spots are available somewhere in the garage before you even enter it - think about how much time that would save you on a busy day! A more complicated system, which FAU doesn't really need, would actually show you how many spots are available by floor like this.

Hopefully FAU can catch onto this somehow (at least three different Student Government administrations have been made aware of this) and integrate it into as many parking garages as possible in the near future. I don't think any students would be opposed to the idea of using A&S fees to integrate this sort of technology on campus.

So although they're not talking about smart garages yet, the Sun Sentinel did point out one thing that I overlooked when talking about students and staff fighting for parking spaces: the 20,000 (!) seniors in the Lifelong Learning Society program are also fighting for spots on campus. Which brings us to...

SHOULD THE LIFELONG LEARNING SOCIETY BE MOVED OFF CAMPUS?

Understand that I'm not talking about ending what has become "one of the largest [continuing education programs] of its kind in the country." I'm simply suggesting that it might be best for everybody if this program was moved off campus to, say, the old Cartoon Museum building in Mizner that nobody seems to know what to do with.

Moving the LLS to Mizner accomplishes a couple things:

1) Frees up parking space for traditional students.
2) Students have complained about LLS students "invading" their Centre Marketplace and, petty complaint or not, it's something that could be mitigated here.
3) Mizner has more things for seniors to do before/after classes.
4) Gets the FAU brand out into the Boca community.
5) Frees up the LLS building for general education classes to be held there and FAU badly needs general education classrooms. More space means more classes offered and more classes offered means more people graduate in four years instead of five or six.

The obvious downsides are:

1) We'd have to pay to renovate space at Mizner.
2) We'd inconvenience FAU professors who used to just be able to walk over and now have to drive to Mizner.
3) It doesn't concentrate a large (and potentially wealthy) donor base on campus that may "create a connection" to FAU. Judging by our low rate of donations compared to a LLS student base that's two-thirds the size of the overall regular student body, I'd say this shouldn't be too much of a concern.
4) We detract from the main campus being the "epicenter" for education and culture in Boca.

FAU's vision for the LLS is pretty ambitious, envisioning it possibly having an enrollment larger than the regular student body. Maybe that's just me but that seems incredibly wrong. We should be focusing on growing the traditional student base and making sure they enjoy their experience here, which leads me to...

OWLHOUSE

This is going to seem a little crazy but hear me out.

When student organizations want to meet on campus, they're primarily congregating at the Student Union. Although there are various rooms of different sizes, there's still an "office space" sense to them which makes social events - like dances - pretty awkward. At schools with Greek Housing, they can offer better socials because the frat/sorority house has a "home" type atmosphere that we can't really replicate here.

But what if we were to build a one story house in the Preserve area, something on campus but "away" from "campus", that student organizations could "rent" out, like they do space in the Student Union?

Maybe something like this? With a large, open living room area like this?

(It doesn't have to be this fancy, it could be a small cabin-type structure). It would have a large living room area, a small kitchen and an outdoor deck. Student organizations could hold social events there, from game nights to inductions to spiritual retreats. They would be responsible for clean up and damages and we could even put security cameras in there to prevent theft or anything else. This "Owlhouse" would be a really unique addition to campus, especially while we're waiting to finally get Greek Housing going.

Alternatively, a "large living room space with kitchen" that "looks and feels like the inside of a house" could very easily be integrated into a new Student Union... but that wouldn't be as unique!

Like I've said before: never apologize for dreaming big. This is how you compete with the big boys. See you Monday.

GO OWLS!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Campus Photos Part 2: Student Union

Let's take a look at some changes they've made to the current Student Union. Some of this may be new to you, some of it may not.... all depends on how long you've been away! (all photos mine)

FIRST FLOOR

Gamer area with all the various consoles available. Another corner is ping pong, one corner is TV, etc. There were a lot of people just hanging around on a Tuesday night at 6 pm (as there should be)

EDIT: Here's a story from the University Press on the importance of the game area.


New Era barbershop (and I guess they also do nails). In the middle of the atrium were several tables of people playing dominoes.

STAIRWELL:

These aren't all that new (they're about a year or two old) but they're still great.




SECOND FLOOR

The hallway right off the stairs. The Wall of Former SGA Presidents has been moved here, new furniture was added and painting was done. FAU color trim is all over the interior of this building. OwlTV is still in the same criminally-undersized space - as is the UP - but for some reason the old SAVI (volunteer) office window says they're home to "FAU media."

The... Silver? Palm Room is now the COSO Clubhouse. According to the UP's OwlWatch blog, the $22,000 Clubhouse essentially functions to give student clubs some meeting and storage space. I guess that's good for E-Board meetings and such.
The Student Union FINALLY, FINALLY has connected its event calendar to a streaming television in the hallway... I pushed for this for YEARS.


This has been around for a couple years now I think... anyway, it's the Student Union computer lab.

Most of the doors got a shiny metallic paint. Looks sharp.




The Office of Greek Life is now the Student Involvement and Leadership Office which also houses the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (I heard it's not called "Greek Life" anymore because, and I'm 100% serious about this, they didn't want people to confuse it with organizations of actual Greek students)

The giant oath that the Greek organizations had to sign is on display in the window.



For what it's worth, I asked a couple employees if they had heard anything about moving to a new Union in a couple years. They said they hadn't but there was some talk about converting the Grand Palm Room to a different kind of non-event space, another rumor about adding a second floor to the Live Oak building and a third rumor about putting up a building out by the outdoor lawn area.
Who knows. Renovating the current union is only a good idea if we're low on money, for instance if we get the $9M but not the money for the Admin/SO building renovations. Even then you're talking about a stopgap measure, really, because the building is pretty old and can only bear so many patches, to say nothing about the fact that it's in a location that's too far displaced from the center of student life (the Breezeway). The "heart of campus" needs to be in the "heart" of campus and it needs to be proportionate in size, as there are national standards for the gross square footage per student that we're probably not meeting. So while these changes look great - and they really do look great - there's only so much lipstick you can put on a pig. We've maxed out. It's time for us to move on to bigger and better things.
 
GO OWLS!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Photo Update: Campus 10/16/12


Took a few pictures in Boca yesterday for you guys. Didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked because of time constraints but I'll go back and get some more soon.

First and foremost...

Dorm construction is still progressing pretty quickly! Looks like they might top it off pretty soon and then tilt-n-pour the walls. "Tilt-n-pour", by the way, is a technique used on many FAU buildings whereby a mold is made of the whole side of a building, concrete is poured into it, then once it's dry and in shape, they tilt the whole thing up and attach it to the framework of the building.... meaning this is pretty close to looking like a legit dorm from the outside!
(Opens Fall 2013)

The Administration and Student Services buildings have these inspirational banners attached to their columns saying things like "Imagination" and "Motivation." Also you may note that the Student Services parking lot got a row of shade trees. They're not the only ones...

The IRT lawn got a row of shade trees too. This lawn was intended for games of soccer, kickball, etc but there's plenty of open lawn space used for that purpose on the west side of the housing volleyball complex, so why not? I'm in favor of these kinds of developments because it can get pretty brutal in the summer/early Fall and palm trees give you NO shade.

Speaking of shade trees... the shade trees along Diversity Way - the long sidewalk connecting the Student Union to the south end of the Breezeway - are really starting to produce a nice canopy, covering another long walk in the heat and the rain. Another note here is that FAU is finally allowing sandwich signs to advertise on campus! It's about time they relented because it is incredibly difficult to get a student's attention simply by flyering in the Breezeway.
On the subject of Diversity Way, here are the school spirit banners (in case you haven't seen them) that have gone up along the path. Technically the bottom part (that says "The Board" here) is intended for student organizations to purchase the space at like $25/pole, but either this program wasn't as popular as originally envisioned -or- SGA dropped the ball because where there used to be banners on every pole, now it's every other pole and some of them don't have student orgs on them at all. Hope it gets better because this was a great idea.

The NightOwls carts got a spiffy new look. Overall there's a lot more red and blue on campus... as it should be.

Not really sure why this was out - I think they were transporting it somewhere - but I thought it was cool to see the "Talon X" sitting out by the old Engineering building. It weighs 230 lbs and had a showing at the 2012 Southeast Conference Concrete Canoe competition.

More to come, including pictures of the Student Union and some shots off-campus too.

I have to say, I was on campus between 5 and 6 pm last night which is supposedly the time when "everybody goes home" and "campus is dead." But it really, really didn't look like that. The Student Union had a ton of people, I saw people walking all over campus, and it just didn't feel like the ghost town it used to be at all. Having been on UF's campus about the same time (5-7 on a weekday), I can vouch for the fact that the after-hours environment was not all that different. As we continue to build more dorms and Greek housing and increase the number of recreational activities on campus, more and more people will stick around and enjoy the campus.

Even walking around campus now you can understand why high school seniors are telling their Twitter audiences, "I finally found my perfect school, FAU! Love it here!"

GO OWLS!