Amundson Hall Addition

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martykoessel
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Amundson Hall Addition

Postby martykoessel » August 31st, 2012, 2:35 pm

The U is looking so begin an addition to and partial renovation of Amundson Hall in early 2013 with completion scheduled for 2014. There are pretty tight spaces for the addition and for construction support, especially with the LRT work occurring at the same time.
http://www.uservices.umn.edu/purchasing ... -Final.pdf

martykoessel
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby martykoessel » August 31st, 2012, 2:41 pm

By the way, if anyone wants to keep easily abreast of construction projects undertaken by the University, the Capital Planning and Project Management site is a great resource: http://www.cppm.umn.edu/
Go to "Project Delivery" => "Active & Completed Projects" to see what's underway now.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby lordmoke » August 31st, 2012, 2:43 pm

Very nice! For such a (relatively) small addition, it sure adds a lot of character to one of the less attractive buildings on campus.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby FISHMANPET » September 1st, 2012, 12:33 am

Keller Hall could use a renovation/addition as well.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Silophant » September 6th, 2012, 1:17 pm

I like it. Amundson's always been a boring building. As far as a Keller Hall expansion, it could sure use it, but there's really nowhere to put it, except in the CSE courtyard between Keller and Lind, which I'd rather avoid. That's a nice green space to have, even more so now that the Nanotech building ate up the Rec Center field.
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby FISHMANPET » September 6th, 2012, 5:49 pm

Keller bugs me because for such a huge building (it's the biggest building on campus by volume) it feels like so much space is wasted on curved and diagonal walls. The College of Science & Engineering has a serious space crunch across all departments and the best we can build is a 4 story building? With Moos tower across the street and the Social Science towers and other tall buildings on the West Bank, it seems like we should be able to put at least one new tower on the East Bank. Maybe we can put something up in the Knoll area where they keep knocking down old buildings.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby MNdible » September 6th, 2012, 6:17 pm

The new Physics Nanotech building should free up a lot of space in other buildings.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby FISHMANPET » September 6th, 2012, 6:29 pm

All that freed up space is already claimed. Geology and Earth sciences will move out of Pillsbury into Tate. English will move out of Lind into a renovated Pillsbury. The new Industrial and Systems Engineering department will quickly grow into Lind Hall.

Computer Science and EE keep growing, and I'm sure it's the same story in every department in the college.

And Speaking of Lind Hall, if you're nearby, go inside and check out the new renovation of the first floor, especially the Taylor Center, room 150, in the North wing.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Silophant » September 6th, 2012, 9:22 pm

Yes, definitely do that. The new library and offices look amazing, to the point where it's a letdown to go up to the unchanged second floor.

I agree that Nanotech should have been taller. I realize that they had trouble even getting the funding they did, and that they didn't want the building towering over Akerman and Keller, but at the same time, that was the last open space in the CSE area. They won't have a chance to put up a new building until they do something drastic like tear down ME or Shepard. They should have planned ahead more than they did. Maybe they could have dug it deep. Not below the bedrock like Civil, but at least down to it.
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby FISHMANPET » September 6th, 2012, 9:39 pm

Speaking of Civil, I've heard rumors they're going to give up on the bottom two floors and fill them with gravel. Something about the water table at the time of construction being at a century's record low.

Shepherd (not Shepard) is old and crummy and could use some renovation but I don't think it would be justified to tear down a reasonably useful building with another build of equal size. Same with ME, except that ME isn't as awful as Shepherd. There's also a couple of million dollars of super fancy instruments in the basement of Shepherd, and the basement is actually bigger than the footprint of the building. http://www.charfac.umn.edu/index.html

Overall I'm just not sure what there is to be done. You certainly can't tear down anything on the mall (though Northrup and to a lesser degree Walter show that the University has no problem reimagining a building). The only real open space is in the north west corner by Dinkytown where they've cleared out buildings, but as hard as CSE had to fight for the NanoTec building, I don't know how they could get anything very tall built.

Ugh, maybe there should be a general UofM thread to move these posts into?

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Silophant » September 10th, 2012, 9:46 pm

Gah, I can't believe I mispelled Shepherd. I even work in a lab there! No, you're right, they won't tear it down until it actually gets bad enough to get condemmed. They're actually putting in a new elevator right now (and about time, too).

About Civil, the story I heard is that Minneapolis was artificially lowering the water table when it was built, and they've since stopped. Either way though, it's true that there's pumps running 24/7 to keep the bottom two floors from flooding. I hadn't heard of the plans to give up on them, though they'd probably like to if they could find somewhere to put all those offices.

As far as the newly open space on 4th St. and 16th Ave, I wish they could have found the money to immediately build a second new dorm there as well. The Greek Row dorm will help some, but there'll still be people back in expanded housing within a couple more years.

Yeah, a general U of M thread would probably be a good idea.
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Nick
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Nick » September 11th, 2012, 6:17 am

Like this one?
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Silophant » November 1st, 2012, 8:40 am

The inventor of Gore-Tex just donated $10 million to this expansion, which, along with the $5 million Dow donated last year, puts the project at more than 50% privately funded.
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Silophant » November 2nd, 2012, 6:36 pm

And the ceremonial groundbreaking was today. I wanted to check it out, but the tent they had it in was packed full.
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby seanrichardryan » December 14th, 2012, 12:24 pm

Q. What, what? A. In da butt.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Silophant » April 9th, 2013, 2:41 pm

As of the morning, there was the skeleton of a handicapped ramp built up the stairs adjacent to the real handicapped ramp. A section of the plaza, just to the left of the picture, was also fenced off. Looks like they're getting started on this.
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby FISHMANPET » April 9th, 2013, 3:32 pm

That fenced of section of plaza looked ridiculous, it looked like they were trying to protect the last little bit of snow left on the ground.

Also I hope that moves around somewhat because the way they fenced that area in really destroys connections in that plaza.

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby Silophant » April 25th, 2013, 10:13 pm

They've been driving foundation piles all this week. I hope they stop for finals, since I have a couple in the rooms immediately adjacent in Keller.
WP_20130425_003.jpg
Also, I hadn't realized the addition would go this close to the Keller wall. Since the upper floors of Keller have a hallway on the exterior wall, I wish they would have just connected the buildings, similar to how Vincent and Murphy or ME and Akerman are connected.
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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby RailBaronYarr » April 26th, 2013, 7:24 am

That would seem like a natural, relatively cheap addition, while preserving that valuable walkway (I used it ALL the time).

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Re: Amundson Hall Addition

Postby FISHMANPET » April 26th, 2013, 7:48 am

They finished driving piles Wednesday afternoon, so thankfully only 2 days of that soul shaking vibration.


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