Lynah remodel - keeping up with the Joneses

[Tub(a)]

[Q]krose Wrote:

 [Q2]billhoward Wrote:

 Cornell should consider becoming the first Ivy school with its own monorail system. Then it wouldn't matter how far away the fields were.  [/Q]
I hear South Ogdenville had one of those, and things didn't work out.

Kyle
[/q]

Eh, it put North Haverbrook on the map.

[ninian '72]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

It would make financial sense (sort of) to replace a building with a bigger building.

 [/q]

You may be right, but I would hate to see that become general policy in planning.  I've had that experience elsewhere, and while it makes it possible to squeeze more activities into a given acreage,  the campus loses a lot of its character when the old stone and brick buildings are replaced by the megaboxes.  In Ann Arbor they built a North Campus where they moved a number of the professional schools when they ran out of room on the main campus.  Harvard is currently developing a large plot of land they own in Alston with the same long-range plan in mind.  Maybe Cornell should consider this alternative, before the current campus is completely filled in.

[billhoward]

(A little knowledge about urban planning is a dangerous thing, but here goes): Density is a good thing, up to a point. It creates vibrancy. Think of Lynah Rink. Think of midtown Manhattan at holiday season. Which is a better place to be: downtown NY or downtown LA? New York City sprawled upwards and that's okay, so long as it's a mix of three, twelve, and forty story buildings (plus good mass transit); if every building is forty stories, it's too crowded. Too much density slows everyone down, raises tempers, you can't get around. Boston or SF or Philadelphia or Chicago, perhaps that's the perfect amount of urban density.

Ithaca is rural but Cornell has space/density issues. At Cornell: Consider a couple of new six or eight, maybe even ten-story buildings vs. twice as many three or four story buildings on campus. The former keeps a plot of grass intact. (More likely keeps it intact so it can be taken away twenty years later.) Plus not every old Cornell building is architecturally significant. Most people believe if there are four buildings of the same genre, two or three can go bye-bye.

Not that you should do it, but imagine the view if you had buildings along some of the gorge. Over time I suspect Cornell is going to have some of the encroachment-on-Collegetown issues that Harvard has with Cambridge and Allston. Over time, the college wins, because if it doesn't get the building this sale, it gets it the next sale. I lived in a house abutting the Smith College campus for a while (nice if you're a single guy, embarrassing as hell if you're a single guy and still can't get a date) and my landlady held out and I think it's now owned by a niece or nephew. But in ten or twenty years, the Sophia Smith Trust will probably hold title.

[jeh25]

[Q]Tub(a) Wrote:

 [Q2]krose Wrote:

 [Q2]billhoward Wrote:

 Cornell should consider becoming the first Ivy school with its own monorail system. Then it wouldn't matter how far away the fields were.  [/Q]
I hear South Ogdenville had one of those, and things didn't work out.

Kyle
[/Q]
Eh, it put North Haverbrook on the map.[/q]

Ironically, today is Matt's 51st birthday!

[ninian '72]

And the Coliseum NEVER sold out.  We can attritute the athletic department's conversion of Yost to incredible vision under the circumstances.  However, they just may have been making lemonade.  The Coliseum was in even worse shape than Yost, and they had to do something with the Yost site, given its highly visible and central location.  This was probably the cheapest alternative available to them.  Since Cornell obviously doesn't have a large, surplus barn anyplace, the incentives for building a new rink would be entirely different.

[billhoward]

Now there's an idea: an ice surface in the middle of Barton Hall.

[nyc94]

[Q]ninian '72 Wrote:
Since Cornell obviously doesn't have a large, surplus barn anyplace,[/q]

With all due respect to ROTC, Barton Hall seems underutilized.  ::whistle::

[puff]

How so? Being a ROTC grad i may have a bias, but when you concider the sports practices that happen in there. Winter its often full of people working out in the evenings/during the day. IMs use it for several sports such as volleyball and b-ball.
And then the track weight room, the throwing cage, CUPD, etc.
Events such as concerts.
And finally the ROTC bit.

But, i will admit the indoor track could go out the door to be replaced with a nice sheet of ice:-D.  Sell it as something like winter training or something.

[ninian '72]

You guys don't disappoint.  I wondered how long it would take...

[Josh '99]

[Q]puff Wrote:
How so? Being a ROTC grad i may have a bias, but when you concider the sports practices that happen in there. Winter its often full of people working out in the evenings/during the day. IMs use it for several sports such as volleyball and b-ball.
And then the track weight room, the throwing cage, CUPD, etc.
Events such as concerts.
And finally the ROTC bit.[/q]And don't forget it's home to the best pep band in the ECAC.

[puff]

i'll be honest, being with the navy i find it hard not to forget about the army and airforce. ::nut::  The only reason i remembered CUPD downstairs was they found my keys the day before i moved to florida a month ago.
I'll be honest, when i think of the pepband i relate them to Lynah, not Barton.

[RichH]

Not just sports practices, but actual sports.  Both indoor track teams compete and train in Barton.  (And they do very well there, btw.)  There are tons of collegiate and high-school track meets (on the state level) held there each year.  ROTC, multi-sport intramurals, CUPD, and the Big Red Bands all make their home in Barton.  Not to mention that it is the only place usuable for large-scale indoor events such as convocations, concerts, and speeches (until Bailey reopens after renovation).  

Spending millions for a retro-fit of an older building and displacing all those campus organizations when a very good ice facility exists a couple hundred yards up the hill is a gigantic waste of money.  IMO.  And if any of you suggest a multi-use facility, then you'll have the Syracuse War Memorial.  Ick.  Try telling recruits "yeah, we've got a new facility in an old building, and we won't be able to use it all the time."

It may have been great timing and a great idea for UMich, but this is a HORRIBLE idea for Cornell right now.  Probably the worst idea discussed up to this point.

If you want to see program that desperately needed a new facility, go look at the old Ohio State rink, where they used to play before the Schott.  Think Cass Park, only enclosed and more ghetto.

Obviously, count me in the "keep Lynah" camp.

[ninian '72]

It's a nice pipe dream, but it has these obvious problems.  At Michigan everything that used to take place at Yost had been moved to the Crisler Arena several years prior, and Cornell doesn't have that kind of facility to absorb displaced events.  I don't know whether multi-use is feasible.  Lynah could still be used for practices, intra-mural games, lessons, and general skates, which would reduce the impact of an ice sheet in Barton.  The real crunch would probably be scheduling, even if Barton were used only for games.  It's likely that a lot of conflicts would result from adding a full hockey schedule into the mix.

[nyc94]

My comment was meant to be a tongue in cheek response to "large, surplus barn", not a serious proposal to convert Barton to a rink. ::rolleyes::  That said, alternative homes come be found for just about every program mentioned other than the track teams.  Maybe someone should have thought about that when they designed the new field house.

[Scersk '97]

[Q]ninian '72 Wrote:

In Ann Arbor they built a North Campus where they moved a number of the professional schools when they ran out of room on the main campus.  Harvard is currently developing a large plot of land they own in Alston with the same long-range plan in mind.  Maybe Cornell should consider this alternative, before the current campus is completely filled in.
[/q]

Yup, professional schools like the School of Music, School of Architecture, Art, and Planning, and School of Engineering.  Just a bunch of wacky graduate students tooling about in labs, right?  Nope.  These are both for undergrads and grads.

Michigan also has a huge, largely freshman dorm (Bursley), grad student housing, and (formerly) married student housing up there.  Oh, and there's a big bell tower (without a clock, mind you, because it's modern!) that looks rather more anatomically correct than Freudian analysis requires.

And what wonderful carriage transports the assembled masses back and forth between North Campus and the "real" campus?  The bus.  The stinking bus.  The get caught in Ann Arbor traffic bus.  The "I spent 7 good years of my life in that damn town and much of it was spent staring out the windows of said" bus.  The bus sucks.  I can't even begin to tell you how much.  It would require at least 3 and one half years of Lynah Faithful vs. Harvard quantities of "Sucks!" to get close.

So, effectively, one third of the students are cut off from the rest of the students.  Really fosters interdiscipinary exchange, hunh?  Guess what the best idea I've heard has been to connect the two campuses:  a monorail.

The relationship of Michigan's North Campus to Ann Arbor and the rest of the university is a wonderful advertisement for any school seeking to do the same.  Cut off in NC's "suburban modern utopian garden campus" any student will feel second class to those that walk amongst the people.

Oh, and did I mention that the architecture sucks?  Notice how the building is deemphasized in this picture, perhaps because it looks like an ugly, brick spaceship has landed in a garden:

http://www.music.umich.edu/resources/facilities/moore.html

Another view:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dixitp/isa/photogal/north_campus/music.jpg

The "bell tower:"

http://www.cfd.tu-berlin.de/~peth/amerika/5_us.html

Other favorites:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dixitp/isa/photogal/north_campus/ggb2.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dixitp/isa/photogal/north_campus/eecs1.jpg
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dixitp/isa/photogal/north_campus/artarch.jpg

That last one was the architecture school...

I have nightmares about Cornell turning into Michigan's North Campus.