They’ve started clearing out the trailers outside of the NCSA building construction between my parking deck and Siebel Center. If it’s anything like our building, I guess they’ve moved the construction offices indoors. Clearing the stuff out around the construction site makes it look much more like a building. It’s neat see it come along, but I’m a little jealous – it seems like it’s moving way, way faster than our building. I guess smaller buildings finish faster. I predict they’ll either add on to Siebel Center or NCSA (or build a connection between them) before 2015. (I just orignally typoed 2105 … I guarantee there will be some expansion to these buildings by then.)

So we went to lunch, ate quickly, and since it was a nice day, looped the quad. Construction behind Bevier and the Morrow Plots is really coming along. We walked over to take a look. They’re building a Post-Genomic Institute there, and I bet it’ll be pretty nice. Its layout reminds me of Siebel Center (but not as much as NCSA.) Since we already down on Gregory, we walked over to look at Campus Rec Center-East. They just finished rennovating it, and it’s pretty swank. Since I figured I wouldn’t get down here again, we went in and looked around. They really improved the place. 3 large basketball gyms, racketball courts, an inside pool with waterslide, fountains, and jet pools; track and weight/cycle facilities. We were there around 1pm, and there wasn’t hardly anyone around. If I were using CampusRec facilities, this is probably the place I would go. If the IMPE rennovations are this nice, the campus is really getting some nice facilities.

Walking back north from Wimpy, we walked up Gregory and they completely refaced/rebuilt the apartment buildings/houses that were on that street (across from 1004/1006 Nevada.) There’s a nice, new, large apartment building with parking and shops below. There’s a Busey ATM, a Subway, a Thai place, and room for more. A little blurb from JSM is all I could find about it, but it sure looks nice. I’m sure JSM is milking the poor music and theatre/arts students who like to live next to Krannert for all they’re worth.

All of this construction is just a block away from where they’re building Christopher Hall, a place where they can study family cohesion and crisis. Just a block north of that, at about the same stage of construction, is the Alice Campbell Alumni Center (drawing), right behind the Spurlock Museum, which has only gone up since I graduated.

So much has changed on campus – if you haven’t been around lately to see it, you really should. If I had a really nice camera, I might even take pictures.

While looking for a book online on tips and tricks to getting the most from ipod/itunes, I found out Champaign is getting a new library. And, apparently, my sales and telecommunication taxes are going up to pay for it. Which, I presume, means I voted for it (and I probably would have,) but I don’t recall doing that. So, whoa, new library. It’s a good thing – I’m always surprised when I go in the main CPL how small it is. They’re going the Busch stadium route of building it right next to the existing one, and then imploding the old one. Look for construction to start soon and end in 2007.

And you thought this post was going to be about basketball, didn’t you?