FSU Facilities Design & Construction "quarterly" update

http://www.urbantallahassee.com/index.php/forums/viewtopic.php?p=37056#p37056

StrikerObi

Anyway, I was at yesterday's FSU Facilities Design & Construction "quarterly" update (it's actually held about twice a year). Nothing major to report since they are in the tail-end phase of lots of projects right now but here's what I got.

- FSU completed land swap with the city. FSU traded the Firestone/Bloxham properties for the empty land just south of the Civic Center (bounded by St Augustine, Macomb, Gaines, and Railroad). This allows the city to develop near Cascades, and gives FSU land for a future College of Business.

- FSU acquired a 40 acre property in Lynn Haven FL, an old fuel depot. It's right on the gulf, and they figure it may be used for research by the Panama City campus.

- FSU completed purchase of 2139 Maryland Court, and has also purchased a commercial condo in the basement level (directly on Bronough St) of Kleman Plaza.

- The Carraway building will need to lose it's lecture hall as a result of the Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences building going up. There's just not enough room for it since it butts up to Woodward Ave and that corner will have drastically increased pedestrian traffic once EOAS is finished. Long-term, they want to demolish Carraway anyway since it's old - but that plan is maybe 20 years out right now.

- Moran School building downtown now has a Dec 15 finish date. It was pushed back by about a month because the roof needed to be redone which was not initially expected.

Apart from EOAS, the only other really major project on the table right now that actually has funding is the new student union. Here are some updates on that

- The new Oglesby Union project has architects! It's a collaboration between Lewis+Whitlock and a firm called Workshop out of Milwaukee that specializes in student unions. This is pretty exciting. You can see Workshop's previous works at http://www.workshoparchitects.com/projects/

- The new Union project is slated for $52M but they are starting to think that to do it right they'll actually need $100-$120M.

- Phase 1A of the new union puts a new building up where the current Union Green is, referred to as the "student life pavilion". This building would be four levels and would contain a new Club Downunder (lower level), student involvement space and CDU balcony (first level), more student involvement space (second level), and the art center, SGA senate chamber, and admin space (third level)

- Phase 1B is a new building that cuts across (running North-South) the current Union plaza, roughly where The Bridge Lounge is right now. It's referred to as "The Gathering". It contains: a sports grille (lower level), coffee lounge (first level), new Kretzman Lounge (second level), and rooftop garden space (third level).

- Future phases would sit on top of the current Union building parcel and contain a new Crenshaw Lanes, food court, ballroom space, retail, and more programming space.

- Moore Auditorium is staying for now. It just got retrofitted with new seats and finishings so it doesn't look like a total dump anymore.

As always, you can see the full powerpoint presentation from the meeting (all 86 slides) at https://www.facilities.fsu.edu/depts/designConstr/

EDIT: I forgot some stuff

- Suwanee Dining Hall is going down for refurb soon, I believe with plans to reopen in May.

- The other main dining hall, formerly known as Fresh Food Co and currently known as the Seminole Cafe, is going down for refurb this summer. When it re-opens it'll be known as the "Seminole Test Kitchen" and will be where they test out new recipes. The best dishes (as voted on by diners) will find their way to other locations on campus. The two dining hall refurbs total about $10M on a shared budget.

- Howser Stadium is getting a new giant video board which should hopefully be done by January in time for the start of baseball season.