JagBytes

Issue date: 1/7/08 Section: CampusCenter

Media Credit: Marcos Dominguez

It has been a long journey for the planners, builders, and university officials in charge of constructing Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis' new Campus Center. As this article goes to press, workers are scrambling to put the finishing touches on a project that can trace its origins to the 1980s.

Dan Maxwell is the IUPUI Campus Center Director. He's preparing a small group of university personnel for one of his "hard-hat tours."

It's an unseasonably cool and blustery autumn day, so Maxwell rushes through the obligatory safety speech and hurries the group through a makeshift entrance door. Once inside the enormous and impressive atrium, Maxwell begins the tour with a short history of the project.

"A campus center, in one form or another, has been proposed for about 20 years," Maxwell says, "but timing, funding, and the needs of the campus never quite came together until about 2000."

On Aug. 8, 2005, site preparation began with the demolition of the Bowers Building, an old, drab brown-brick building that once served as campus police headquarters. What has risen from the ruins of that site is a massive structure of stainless steel and smoked glass with a skyscraping bell tower. The difference is remarkable.

In many ways, the entire process has been a microcosm of the university's future vision: old models and attitudes of what it means to be an urban campus must be torn down, and new, fresh ideas must be erected in their place in order to stay relevant and move forward.

As the group winds its way through construction equipment, palettes of electrical boxes and slabs of dusty granite, Maxwell halts and explains that we are now standing in what will be the food court.

He then points out precisely where seating areas, restaurants and the bookstore will be. Despite the clutter, visitors can tell he sees it all coming together and can visualize the finished product. As he tells the group how the building will fill the needs of a changing campus, it's obvious he's been energized by the project entering the home stretch.

"I can walk through the door, grab some lunch, buy a book, a new IUPUI sweatshirt, and enjoy a 'mocha-choco-latta' without ever leaving the building," Maxwell says. "It's going to be a very cool place where you can come hang out with friends or just find a quiet place to study when you need to."

Continued...

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