Friday, April 26, 2013

Projects Underway

Parking Garage 3 is finally under construction but there's very little to show you at this point other than a green fence surrounding dirt being moved around by cranes. Doesn't make for very exciting photographs but the good news is, it's underway. Very much doubt it'll be ready by the home football opener vs MTSU on September 21st but it could be open by the Shula Bowl on 11/29 (official word from FAU is "late Fall 2013").

Unfortunately, I'm hearing that Garage 3 will not have retail when it opens. Guess this is to be expected since there haven't been any announcements about it and nobody seemed to know what was going on there until now. Pretty bummed about that.

Other projects that FAU is working on:

- The $2M Centre Marketplace expansion, expected to open mid-July 2013.

 - $1.8M addition to the Memory & Wellness Center, funded by donation.

- Trauma Simulation Center for the Med School in the R&D park.

- The College of Urban and Regional Planning is consolidating in Boca while the School of Graphic Design and Multimedia is shipping down to the Davie campus.

- Campus Rec is looking into a "Design [for an] outdoor sports facility incl Vollyball, tennis & basketball courts" but that project is classified as ON HOLD.A basketball court and a sand volleyball court are in the design for the courtyard of the new dorm, Parliament Hall.

- Along those lines is a "QUOTE - Add three sand Volleyball Courts west of Oxley." WEST of the Oxley? West of the Oxley is the football practice fields, so they must mean even west of that... but that seems pretty out of the way to put up some sand volleyball courts.

- Renovation for the Student Union lobby, including new furniture. This may be tied to the upcoming expansion of the Union.

- Quote to add a projection screen to the Founders Lounge.

- Repaving 20th Street.


Nothing new on:

- Construction of University Park on 20th Street.

- 20th Street becoming University Boulevard.


In other news:

- The Team Store on the second floor of the stadium opened for the Spring Game, so now there are two team stores in the stadium.

- The Jupiter campus held their first TED conference and it went well. For those who aren't familiar with the event, TED stands for "Technology, Education and Design." The so-called "TED talks" originated in California and have drawn in a ton of fascinating speakers to discuss advances in their respective fields, usually via story. Here's a great example:


FAU's conference may not have drawn in any famous speakers during its first go-around but it's a start and a step in the right direction. Hope it spreads to the Boca campus as well.
 

                                                                             GO OWLS!

Monday, April 15, 2013

New Food Options in the New Dorm

According to the March 20th, 2013 Meeting Minutes on the DineonCampus website, the new dorm should have a Red Mango and a Simply Puur.

Red Mango is a frozen yogurt, smoothie and "frozen coffee chillers" place. On their site you'll find this list which goes into a little more detail about that. Basically we'll finally have a froyo place on campus.

Simply Puur seems like a "healthier, more wholesome" version of the Caf - which is good. Sandwiches, soups, rice bowls, coffee. Below is a promotional video showing off some of their food, though if you just want to skip it you can see their full menus here. You can also read the Yelp reviews of the Orlando location here.


In other Dining News, Chartwells had sponsored a Naming Contest for Coyote Jack's (which is unfortunately over now, sorry about that) via their Facebook page because "The Client (The University) wants to have their own brand and start a new legacy. IT will still be a sports bar like place but with a new flare and menu."

I assume this means it will have a more FAU-specific name (Coyote Jack's never really made any sense) and hopefully, ohpleasegod, a decent menu for once; I could never get anybody to go there for food after the first time, which was pretty telling.

They got >400 submissions and the winner of the Coyote Jacks Renaming Contest will be announced June 1st. 

What would you have called it?
                                                                             GO OWLS!

Friday, April 12, 2013

Photo Update: Centre Marketplace Expansion, All-Night Study Center

If you've been on campus lately, you might have noticed some construction going on over at the Student Union. This is not the formal expansion project we've previously discussed but rather an expansion to the Centre Marketplace buffet area, colloquially known on campus as "the Caf."

(Not "the Cafe," mind you, but "the Caf." No idea why.)
 
So what are they doing? Well, as FAU grows, so too must the dining areas for feeding them. With the new, yet-unnamed Residence Hall opening in Fall 2013, our total residential student population will be topping out around 4,100 people, so Chartwells needed to expand the Caf by 500 seats.

(As an interesting side note, we had only 2,300 people living on campus in 2010, a mere three years ago)

According to FAU documents, the project will double the capacity of the Caf at a cost of $5.6M. That's a figure that may sting a little bit considering how close it is to the $6M that GEO Group was going to give us, but apparently this is a contractual thing requiring Chartwells Food Services to make capital investments in the university infrastructure. So it's not like FAU is using $5.6M that it had stashed away somewhere that could have gone to the stadium. Let's be clear on that.

EDIT: I previously stated that the expansion would cost $2M, which seems like a more reasonable estimate to just add more floor space, so I'm wondering what the additional cost could be - maybe new food kiosks? I'll ask around. At one point there was a rumor going around that Chartwells was considering a dedicated kitchen area that you could order a dinner from and then pick it up; perhaps that's back on the table? I have absolutely no sources to back that up at this time, though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Anyway...

I snapped some pictures for you guys on a recent visit. Here's how the Expansion looks now:





If you remember the giant egg/football/whale statue that used to be coming out of the ground, this completely replaced that - it's going to extend pretty much all the way to the road (West University Drive).

And here's how it will look:


Not too shabby! Especially digging the multicolored planes of glass. The rendering also suggests that the road in front of it will be redone with pavers, but I honestly doubt that's going to happen because, quite frankly, paving just the portion of road outside of the Caf will look silly and repaving a larger portion of West University to match it would be pretty costly.

That said, I do think both Glades entrances should be redone with pavers to give them a more grandiose presentation but seeing as they just repaved the western (main) entrance with regular asphalt, I doubt they're going to be installing pavers any time soon. Maybe it's for the best because what you'd really want to do there is pavers, extensive landscaping around the signs and redo the median to have a water feature like a row of fountains.

In the meantime, we can continue to do other small projects like this recent $50,000 renovation of the All-Night Study Area on the east side of the library. According to the new SG website, the renovation provided for "better seating, charging stations, and study areas." Take a look:


As you can see, one thing SG has been really good about is integrating the school colors into more things. I'm not sure how much of this was red and blue before (pretty sure the stairwell was already blue, or maybe more of a green color before?) but the second floor definitely has more blue and red. Also, I believe this seating area is new:


I used the All-Night Study Area quite a bit in undergrad - in fact, my study group was once kicked out because it "wasn't open yet." Once it opened, it was an awesome place because every university needs to have a 24/7 study spot. The fact is tests occur on all days of the week and there are times when students need to review Powerpoints on campus at 2 am on a Tuesday for their test at 9 am on Wednesday morning, so there needs to be a place for them. That's just college (and grad school, and professional school, but you get my point). So the original construction of this facility was pivotal especially since they had removed the original 24-hour Study Center that became Einstein's Bagels (for those of you who are new to FAU, that's what used to be in that space).

But even that's not enough space, as anecdotal reports are streaming through on Twitter about people having to sit on the floor in the library because there isn't enough space. Student Government responded by requesting that Administration consider building a dedicated Study Building, which on most college campuses is called "a new library." Hey, you never know. FAU does have an interest in building a "Science and Technology Library."

Student Government has been up to a couple other things as well. Three Historic Plaques have gone up on campus dedicated to the football team (seen below), the university's dedication by Lyndon B. Johnson (by the library) and President Barack Obama speaking at the Burrow (outside the Burrow). There may be more but these are the ones that I know about right now.


In other news, there's been no movement (as far as I can tell) on the following projects:

- University Park, the dorm project to be built on 20th Street
- Officially renaming 20th Street to University Boulevard

Until next time.

P.S. Don't let the recent controversies at FAU shake your faith. This is still a great school with great people and a great atmosphere. It's still making tremendous strides forward. Be proud of your heritage.

                                                                            GO OWLS!