Bill Gates Hall > goodbye Hoy Field?

[DeltaOne81]

[quote Trotsky]I don't think it's foolish at all to think Ithaca support an A or AA team.  Lots of disposable income floating around, lots of 20-somethings to sell beer to.  I'm pretty surprised Ithaca has not, in my memory, ever had a team.[/quote]

Ithaca has had a NYCBL team on and off, which played at IC.

Search for Ithaca on these pages:

http://www.nycbl.com/history.html
http://www.logoserver.com//NYCBL.html
http://www.nefan.net/nycbl.htm

[RichH]

[quote DeltaOne81]
Ithaca has had a NYCBL team on and off, which played at IC.[/quote]

The Lakers played some games at Hoy Field as well.  I went to see them several times...it must have been in 1996.  The attendance numbered about 20, counting the scorekeeper.

Just looking through the rosters, I notice there are a couple CU players playing for Elmira this summer.

I guess Elmira joined the NYCBL this year after being "phased out" of the independent Can-Am League (from the Northeast League).  After being a member of the PONY/NY-Penn Leauge for decades (Don Zimmer got married at Dunn Field), the franchise moved to Utica in the mid-90s (now is in Lowell, MA), leaving Elmira with an indie team.  Just another casualty of the distasteful trend of moving low-level minor league teams to major-league urban/suburban areas.  But that's a completely different soapbox.

[BCrespi]

Yeah, I'd prefer grass to turf as well, but I imagine they'll use field turf, which is so much better for athletes (and aesthetics as well in my opinion) tha the old turf.  Additionally, other sports (namely sprint football and the marching band, among other activities and sports) use the outfield and I'm sure this will be much better for the multi-use demands.

[nyc94]

The latest issue of Cornell Engineering has an article on proposed long term projects for the engineering quad.  The cover of the magazine shows a model of the quad with exisiting buildings in beige, new buildings in purple, and significant alterations to existing buildings in yellow.

Gates Hall will NOT be on Hoy Field.  The current plan is to wedge it in the back of the quad.  It would be "L" shaped and form what looks like an enclosed courtyard with Upson and Grumman.  Good thing Bill Gates is rich because I'd be annoyed if I coughed up $25 million and my namesake building wasn't visible from the road.

It looks like I am going to get my wish with the proposed demolition of Carpenter Hall.  Mechanical, aerospace, civil, and environmental engineering would move into a new building on the site of Carpenter.  Admissions, administration, and the library would move into a renovated Upson.  Also expect a serious overhaul of Hollister.  Unfortunately Kimball, Thurston, and Bard are spared. Expect an addition on the back.  Goodbye parking lot?

[French Rage]

Geez I only graduated three years ago and I'm not gonna recognize over half of the engieering quad in a few years.

[David Harding]

Anyone interested in the future of the campus should take a look at this web page http://www.masterplan.cornell.edu/

[RichH]

[quote David Harding]http://www.masterplan.cornell.edu/[/quote]

well, that url sounds nice and....sinister.

[nyc94]

[quote David Harding]Anyone interested in the future of the campus should take a look at this web page http://www.masterplan.cornell.edu/[/quote]

Those plans/proposals are pretty scary.  One of the proposals has new engineering buildings on Hoy Field and the squash courts.  It essentially creates a second engineering quad with the removal of Hoy Road.  And you just can't like a Powerpoint slide titled "The Opportunity Areas: Alumni Fields and East Campus".

Olin Hall, Gannett, the campus store and even Day Hall are possible candidates for demolition and replacement.  Considering the phase II workshop presentation is dated April 24-25, 2007 it strikes me as odd that I was recently solicited by the School of Chemical Engineering for funds to help pay for the upcoming addition to the building.  The Master Plan is supposed to span the next 50 or so years but it's hard to get excited about giving money for a building you have a very good chance of outliving.

[billhoward]

Campus Store could go tomorrow. It was one of Cornell's biggest flubs. It was supposed to be completely underground - not the grass covered bunker it became. But Cornell hit bedrock 10, 15 feet sooner than it expected and rather than pay extra to do it right, Cornell just let it ride up. In some decades there was a glass walled shaft (more like a courtyard) in the middle but that gave way for more selling space. The idea was that there'd be an unbroken field of view from Day Hall to the Straight.

Campus Store dates to about 1970, meaning a bunch of alumns are alive who saw it built, and the engineering qyad was (?) 10, 15 years earlier. Those colored panels below the windows are sort of carbon dating for 1960s architecture. Seems like all the alumns should be dead, who saw a building built, before the new one goes up. Maybe this is the Cornell version of a Beverly Hills teardown.

Putting artifical turf on Hoy Field is a good preemptive move to save it from being put out to pasture (bad mixed metaphor). More people will rely on Hoy, not just the baseball team, and it will be harder to get rid of. Cornell needs to see how nicely Princeton (much smaller school) builds new buildings yet manages to keep sports facilities close to campus. Or in the case of the football stadium, integrates some academic uses into the outer shell.

[Josh '99]

[quote billhoward]Cornell needs to see how nicely Princeton (much smaller school) builds new buildings yet manages to keep sports facilities close to campus. Or in the case of the football stadium, integrates some academic uses into the outer shell.[/quote]That's a bit misleading.  Princeton has a much smaller enrollment than Cornell (6,600 combined undergrad and grad vs. 19,500 combined) but almost as much land area to work with (600 acres vs. 745 acres).  They've also got an endowment almost three times as large ($14.2B vs. $5.1B).  So if you don't need facilities for as many students, and you have almost flexibility as far as where you put things, and you've got a lot more money to work with, it seems entirely reasonable that you could do a lot better job of making things centralized.

[rstott]

Just keep in mind that this is this year's master plan.  Master plans come and go.
               
I've been told that the reason Bradfield Hall is so oddly sited with no entrance onto Tower Road is because the master plan at the time called for building a connecting road from Tower Road to Forest Home Drive so Bradfield would have been on the corner.

[Liz '05]

[quote nyc94]It looks like I am going to get my wish with the proposed demolition of Carpenter Hall.  Mechanical, aerospace, civil, and environmental engineering would move into a new building on the site of Carpenter.  Admissions, administration, and the library would move into a renovated Upson.  Also expect a serious overhaul of Hollister.  Unfortunately Kimball, Thurston, and Bard are spared. Expect an addition on the back.  Goodbye parking lot?[/quote]

Oooh, then maybe Upson will have more than one women's bathroom.  Not that I particularly minded getting to leave math class for excessive amounts of time, but it was annoying when I was on crutches.

[KeithK]

Oh come on.  It had at least two...

[ugarte]

[quote KeithK]Oh come on.  It had at least two...[/quote]
Stop stalking the ladies, Keith.

[jtwcornell91]

[quote Liz '05]Oooh, then maybe Upson will have more than one women's bathroom.  Not that I particularly minded getting to leave math class for excessive amounts of time, but it was annoying when I was on crutches.[/quote]

But really, what about Cornell is not annoying when you're on crutches?  (Other than history majors who let you lean on their shoulders as you walk them to the library :-))