Dillingham gets renovated!

As some of you recent grads may know, a lot of construction has been happening on the IC campus lately. We just got a new business school (called, The Park Building...not confusing at all...) and by the time I graduated in May they had already half-completed the new "Gateway Building."

The campus looks pretty different than it did even four years ago. Some of the TAMs showed me the plans for how Dillingham and the area around it is going to be renovated and, when that is done, it's going to be almost unrecognizable!

The Gateway Building is going to be the new Job Hall, essentially. It will house a lot of admin offices and connect Dillingham to the Campus Center complex through the new business school. (So now students will finally be able to walk from Campus Center to Dillingham without freezing their butts off in the winter!) The only bad thing is that it blocks Dillingham's great view of the lake from the Costume Shop. I suppose sacrifices must be made.

In order to connect to the Gateway Building, they are, I believe, taking out the ticket office area and the offices behind it and also reconfiguring the stairs that used to go to the left of the fountain. It's all a bit confusing. The plans also showed the fountains being completely re-done. I can't quite describe it so I'm going to try to find a picture of what it's supposed to look like when finished and post the link on here.

So many changes in such a short time...

I try not to spend a lot of time on the campus during the summer, as I spend too much time on it during the year, but I was there the other day and Steve TenEyck (earlier alums, he's the lighting designer and assoc chair -- terrific guy) walked me thru the completely gutted Hoerner & Clark theatres -- EVERYthing is down and out, from grids to fly systems -- all new cable is being put in, there is now a booth in the Clark -- the burning question is...will the transformation be complete by the time of tech rehearsals for the first show in the Clark?!

Philosophy & Religion is almost completely moved out to a new location, and admissions will be leaving the building too, leaving it pretty much to us and the custodial staff -- there are great plans for a transformed Dillingham, but as usual with these projects the costs are already well over the estimates -- so who knows what it will look like in the next few years -- all I know is that my office is destined, next summer, to be 'trimmed' a bit -- I told them that as long as I don't have to move the books, they can do with it what they will!

That's the latest from the hard hat zone formerly known as Dillingham!