This link from University Design & Construction shows a couple new perspectives not seen in previous releases, along with a detailed site plan (although the image they provide isn't high enough quality to see the small text details).
Usually in-construction photos are posted to these pages - the same format is followed for all campus projects. We'll be able to keep tabs on it this fall, should be interesting to watch.
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In other related news the MVs are also getting a new facility.
http://www.pdc.facilities.vt.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Marching_Virginians...
That should be a great benefit for the MV's. They've needed something along those lines for a very long time.
Does this roof design give them room to kick?
Yes.
Most likely but I'm not certain it will allow Bucky to practice without ducking.
At what point to we realize that Bucky should be on punt blocking and field goal blocking squads. Just tell him, "Stand straight up. If the ball is going to go past you, move into its way."
You know how David Wilson caught a rabbit? Bucky caught a plane.
Someone's gonna hafta write a folk song about Bucky.
Something along the lines of "the man can ball, he's sixty feet tall, gonna block yer kick and make a pick". Maybe that's too rappish. I'll leave it to you guys.
If watching futurama has taught me anything, he's gonna need to be betrayed by a hard hearted woman at some point.
"Now Bucky was a man, bout sixty feet tall,
I tell you now that the man could ball,
In the blink of an eye he'd block a kick,
and before you knew he'd make a pick.
But there was a woman for whom he'd fall,
Went by the name of Clara M Hall,
Clara was mean, hard and heartless,
with Bucky's love she was wreckless."
MADE AN EDIT:
I mispelled now.
You nailed it like a 61 yarder and no time on the clock. Really nice.
I would suggest something similar to The Ballad of Jayne Cobb (The Hero of Canton):
All Firefly references earn my turkey leg.
yes, the roof height is 85' at it's peak. Other versions of indoor practice facilities have a roof height of 65'. The platform that you see in that rendering above is at 65'
Don't trip.
The practice facility looks like it will be impressive. I hadn't even considered the Hokie Stone aesthetic for some reason. Very cool, and very appropriate.
On the East Perspective it would have been a nice touch to see them put a facade of each pylon from the War Memorial on the upright column points with the final one being Ut Prosim closest to the stadium.
Check out Bitter's latest post and here is what you will find:
"The eight inscriptions -- Brotherhood, Honor, Leadership, Sacrifice, Service, Loyalty, Duty, and Ut Prosim -- can be found at the bottom of the large precast concrete and Hokie stone piers along the west face of the building."
Yeah I actually saw it in the video link that was just posted where the doors were open for the players going inside. Its a nice touch but could have been developed a bit more.
Its about the 1:30 mark on the video down below where you see it.
It could happen. If money is an issue then a few donations could add some nice touches. Anyway they thought of your idea.
It is a solid touch. Andy's blog post towards the bottom has a lot of good information on how they prepared it. Was a really good read.
The location, planning, and conceptual design of the facility, with its many criteria , hurdles and roadblocks was executed exceptionally. However, the aesthetics of the finished building seem underdeveloped, especially on the interior. The exterior starts to feel like a modern version of an ancient Greek temple with a barrel roof.
The aesthetics are acceptable, but fall short of evoking excitement. If you look at the building without knowing what it was designed for, it is not obvious that its a practice facility. For a project that was so long in development, one of the most important aspects was rushed at the end. When all is said and done, it's addressing an important need and the overall project has all the makings of being a success.
IMO, it's one of the better looking practice facilities. Regardless, don't most college indoor practice facilities look like glorified airplane hangers -- inside and, in many cases, out?
What would make it more "obviously" a "practice facility"? And why would one want to make it "obviously" look like a practice facility? I would think the objective would be for it to NOT look like a practice facility from the outside.
It's not necessary that it is "obvious" that it's a practice facility,
but it looks nothing like one. It isn't that the design is inherently bad,
its that the proper time has not been take to develop the design-
and that certainly is "obvious" in the renderings. It has to do something
more than just being shiny and new.
Hokie sports have set the bar very high with the design of previous facilities.
This design does not measure up to "those -that- have passed ... reach for excellence"
Visually, I'd prefer an interior that resembles something like this:
really? that looks awful to me. well, maybe not on its own, but i think the VT facility renderings look MUCH nicer.
wait a second...did YOU design that Illinois facility!?
yes I designed it. good call.
Take another look at the ceilings in both buildings and
tell me which one had more thought put into it....
wrong. its the Ill. facility.
I just feel the design has been rushed.. and it has - that's all.
I have to disagree. The Illinois ceiling looks like they didn't think about kicking indoors. It could just be the angle, but the ceiling appears to be significantly lower. So with that point, I'd have to say VT put more thought into there's. Gotta have room to practice Beamerball after all, go Hokies!
not the height of the ceiling but how its designed...
my original post said 'visually' superior...
The height was a priority for Tech- not all
programs want the height. A higher ceiling = higher costs.
The Tech facility is $21 compared to the Ill ($12mill - in 2000)
I like the schematic design for the VT building-
The Ill building is just an example of a more developed ceiling design.
That's all
i think you're making assumptions about the VT design, but i could be wrong. it seems to me they knew what they wanted: something to fit in with the appearance of Cassell and Merrymann (to a lesser extent) with the roofline. i don't see what you mean by "rushed". a large square flat roofed building or a building with a standard A frame appearance for the roof would have seemed rushed to me maybe, but i don't see how the VT design seems rushed. it looks almost perfect to me.
schematically it works.
It just needs to be developed more.
That's all.
Its pretty obvious though that the roof area is just a rendering and cant actually be what it will look like. Why you say? Well, the big thing that stands out at me is that there is not one light fixture shown in the rendering of the roof area. How many light fixtures did the Illinois facility require? It appears to be 72-84 fixtures. The Tech rendering doesnt have the support structure to hang nearly that many so I imagine the reality of the roof will be significantly different than the photo other than the shape.
I think the rendering from that angle was mainly to give you a depth perception view of the height of the facility and the intention to have viewing platforms at least along one side.
I agree. These are progress images.
or the entire roof is a giant LED panel... ;)
personally, i would hope they try to mimic a stadium with all the lights on the sidelines, not the endzones or above the field. maybe they are going to be hung under (or just above) the coaching platform?
I spy lights. No guarantee if that's the actual design though, I guess.
The lights are positioned like that to give the effect of Lane inside the facility. At least this is what we were told in the meeting. They can also pump in stadium noise. It's effectively indoor Lane.
Oh, so it's noon 24/7 in there?
That's the only acceptable time to play right?
I believe it is currently under design. The renderings are conceptual and prepared for the contract solicitation.
makes sense. All in all, it should be an awesome addition to the campus.
No offense, but to my uneducated eye that just looks like my local Costco with a pointed roof and artificial turf.
Im excited for the football team and MVs, but I cant wait until that new classroom building is built so Derring Hall will be hidden
Someone remind me again why we don't rotate the outdoor field to run parallel to the indoor field, so we have two full length practice fields (one indoor & one outdoor) instead of one full length indoor field and two (approx) half length outdoor fields?
the original idea was to have 2 full size indoor/outdoor fields- with higher and larger roll up doors.
There still is an option to rotate the outdoor field.
Yeah.... all they have to do is repaint the lines. And maybe move the goalposts.
You can have two fields perpendicular to the indoor fields at about 60 yard lengths, or a single 100 yd field parallel to the indoor field. Just requires re-striping the turf- its a contiguous area of turf.
Also take a look at the Corps dorm pics, they dont do it justice quite how deep they went down for the foundation, but it is cool to see construction actually started!
Also I had heard that one of the reasons the Signature Engineering Building is not open yet was that they dropped the fancy donated GE jet engine the first time they tried to instal it. Anyone know if that's true or not?
cool- webcam:
http://oxblue.com/open/BartonMalow/VATechUpperQuad
not sure about that but construction is pretty much done now. the construction fence is down and I have a class in there in the fall
I don't believe that is true. You can see from this photo dated from November of 2012 that it was at least installed. It may have fallen since then, but that would be quite a big deal on a several of fronts-- jet engines aren't exactly light and this one is mounted 4 stories above the (now) finished floor. I've followed the construction of this and many other projects, and when something goes catastrophically wrong, you typically hear about it (i.e. the Davidson Hall scaffolding collapse).
They still haven't fixed the ghost problem still
There is definitely a ghost in Slusher Wing. I know this for a fact.
Details? I love a good ghost story.
Slusher Ghost:
Ok so my roommate and I went over to Dietrick Express one night late night (like 1 AM) to grab some food. We come back to Slusher Wing on the War Memorial end and the doors are locked. This wasn't a surprise, it just meant we needed to wait outside for someone to leave the building so we could get inside (we had done this before). We cut some slack to the people who lived on the bottom floor, deciding to let them sleep instead of pounding on their windows to get up and let us in.
So we're sitting there at the top of the ramp, waiting for someone to come out. It was a nice night, so we ate our Express and chilled. Campus was quiet. Nobody even walking by.
So we're sitting there and we started to hear a girl whispering. We looked at each other, puzzled. "Do you hear that?" I asked him. "Yeah, what is that," he responded. "Sounds like a girl whispering..."
So we start looking up the wall to see if any of the end-of-building windows in the stairwell were open. None were. I walked about the back of the building, facing Slusher Beach. He walked about the front, towards Dietrick. We didn't hear anything on either side. The voice was quiet, but it was quiet, so we thought we would hear something. Nothing.
"Is there anyone over there?" I asked.
"Nah, no one. Do you see anyone?"
"Nah. Hold up, maybe it stopped." I walked back over to the ramp and could still hear her. "Yeah she's still whispering," I said. "No one over there?"
"Nah."
"No one over here, either." We looked over at War. There were no windows on that side of the building. Payne Hall was too far away, but he strolled over there anyway. Nothing. I could still hear her at the ramp, but he couldn't hear her from there. East Campbell? We looked up and down the building, but there was no activity. When he came back, I took a few steps over there. He could still hear her at the ramp. I couldn't hear her even a few steps closer to Campbell.
"Wait..." he paused. "It sounds like there is a little bit of an echo..."
I walked back to the ramp. We walked up to the Slusher stairwell door. We could hear her well enough to know she was saying something, but still couldn't make it out. The voice was clearly coming from somewhere immediately around us. We looked down. There was an air intake grate right below us. We exchanged glances.
"What kind of sh!t is this?" I asked.
"Really?".
We bent down to the grate.
"Help me"
We exchanged glances.
"Help me"
It sounded like a girl.
"Help me" A helpless little voice.
"Is someone down there?" my roommate asked the grate.
"Help me"
"It sounds like she's saying 'Help me'," I said.
"Help me. I don't know what happened" she persisted.
"Are you stuck? How did you get down there?"
"Help me".
My roommate and I looked at each other, both clearly terrified. Just then, someone came out the stairwell. We ran our asses back inside. Talked about it again the next morning. Still have no explanation.
It wouldn't be the first time Dietrich food caused hallucinations...
Freaky as shit Horse! The only ghost story on campus I've heard about is the
one about the duck pond.
I haven't heard that one. Care to elaborate?
Just heard of sightings of a young man walking around/near the
duck pond at night. Seems like my alumni cousin told me about it but she
didn't know the story behind it.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ParanormalGhostSociety/conversations...
Interesting. Thanks for sharing!
I thought it was almost comical that after following him for miles that his being transparent, disappearing, floating, walking through guardrails and zig-zagging across the street didn't convince them. Him having no face is what really did it. But 2 people seeing the same thing adds alot of credibility to the story.
Yeah for real LOL because can't everyone just walk through guardrails??
I love hearing stories like this because I secretly would like to experience
something like that.
im sure it was them trying to not believe which made them justify the other stuff,
Either way this is how I prefer to remember the Duck Pond. Simply Awesome.
One of the most beautiful sights on campus besides
Lane Stadium of course. ;)
Ah, the gazebo. Like possibly countless others, that was where I proposed to my wife.
you and me both, man...you and me both...
If i saw a ghost with no face odds are i would have done wet my britches
I know when I lived in Monteith, there were times it felt like someone had a hand on your shoulder and was breathing on your neck, but no one would be in the room. My roommate experienced it multiple times as well. We were never able to confirm it, but we think it may have been the room of La Porte.
Matt, at least his sophomore(06-07) year lived in the basement of Brodie I believe, back when a platoon of Band lived there.
Could have been Mindy Somers, who fell out her eighth story window in Slusher Hall on Halloween in 1997. Newspaper delivery guy was the one that found her and at first thought it was a bad Halloween prank.
http://articles.philly.com/1997-11-25/news/25544483_1_drinking-by-colleg...
Yes, that was what we ended up concluding decisively. We didn't remember her name at the time, but we looked it up later and tried to talk to her another night late. Didn't hear her again.
I lived in Slusher Wing and was in that first pod of rooms on the first floor near the ramp.
That's creepy.
If you were there in 2000/2001 I may have woken you up a couple times to let me in.
Sorry about that. To you and your predecessors/successors.
I was there 1999 - 2000.
I worked with her mom at my first job out of school. Told me on my first day that her daughter went to Tech in the late 90's (without mentioning this), then I asked what she did for a living now. I felt sooooooooooooooooooooo bad when she told me what happened.
Ugh, brutal stuff. Totally not your fault though.
I graduated in 1998 so this is exactly what I thought of when I started reading HOAT's post.
More ghosts than LOLUVA had fans at their spring game.
Are they open to suggestions on what images to hang as banners?
I have some, see below:
And maybe put the Fullers on the other side. And their parents. And the hospitals they were born in.
dancing Frank..
That's perfect but we still need the #EntireFullerFam enshrinement.
agree - that may be a whole other building!
I dunno but I definitely deserve a 65 foot mural in the end zone, like you have in the image.
Barrel Vault...mmmmm... Makes me think of beer or bourbon.
The reasoning for the two half size and one full size field was maximizing space. Rarely do you need 100 yards in practice, much less two full sized fields.
This gives them three to spread out over if they want. You could theoretically practice all three phases of the game on different fields, at the same time, while not interrupting each other.
I think it's going to look awesome. That combined with the Basketball facility up the road, recruits are going to see an entire area of campus, devoted heavily to athletics.
What is the height of the north end zone stands? I wonder how visible this will be from Lane during games.
About 35 feet high
cool aerial shot circa 2011-2012
our sports complex has to be one of the most compact/well planned complexes in all of college sports. I do think that if/when Cassell is ever replaced, a garage will need to be part of the design. whether it be adjacent, underneath, whatever the case may be, more parking is needed on this end of campus. i understand the desire to keep surface parking for football gamedays, but garages should be added where they can as future plans are rolled out.
There's already a garage planned for The Cage and we will likely see one on Chicken Hill in the future too.
funny, i was going to suggest the far end of chicken hill, but i deleted it for fear of upsetting the great tailgaters we have over there! garages just force us to be a little more communal...park and join other tailgates in nearby surface parking!
so where would everyone envision a new bball arena? Cassell parking lot? where rec tennis courts are? in its current location (requiring 1-2 years playing in Roanoke or something?). i know it's going to be in the long term plans at some point, so i'm just speculating for fun, not hating on Cassell. I love Cassell, but i also hope our program(s) outgrow it someday!
Couldn't they just move their tailgates to the top level of the parking garage? It would be the same area, just higher up.
New arena where Rector currently stands, with connections to softball, baseball and soccer to improve those team's facilities. New surface parking where the track complex currently sits (better tailgate lot for football, more accessible parking for baseball, softball and basketball, and opens up parking space while a much needed deck can be built in the Cassell Lot). Relocate track and field across the street where the intramural softball fields currently sit.
The 'New Cassell' discussion is worthy of its' own thread, but I'd be surprised if we don't choose to first renovate Cassell, as opposed to replacing it. It seems Whit made an early comment that the 'bowl' was fine, but there needed to be a significant upgrade in the customer experience - aka - concourse, among others. Inside the bowl? Better A/V information, and rethinking the current distribution of seating. Outside? better customer engagement, better concessions, better services, etc. I seriously doubt we ever build a larger arena in terms of seating. Most newer arenas being constructed now are moving to smaller capacity, as VT is not the only school in the country with problems filling seats for non-weekend conference games. GaTech made their arena a little smaller when they rebuilt it, many others are doing the same. They're essentially reconfiguring the older arrangements with less capacity.
With the new video boards just put in last year, as well as an investment in upgrading the lights that should happen around the first week of August, I just don't see a "New Cassell" being in the immediate plans. Maybe 10 years or so down the line, but Cassell is functional and there are only plans to do minor renos. The Hall of Fame is now on the south concourse area wall, concessions accept cards as of last year, and marketing is receiving a revamp due to Whit. Tim East, who was the Associate Director of Athletics for External Affairs and the one who the marketing department reported to, is one of the first to receive the axe from Whit. Unless Buzz plans to stick around for a while and starts getting the place to sell out consistently, I see Cassell staying the home of the Hokies.
I would like to see them add a three to four story garage where the tennis courts are right now and then put the tennis courts on top of the garage with nets over the top of them to prevent people from getting beaned with balls. If you put two levels in subterranean, you could theoretically have five to six levels of parking while keeping the tennis courts
That site is being held for a future student related facility (student center, etc.). Steger was pretty vocal in not wanting the indoor facility on that site. Of course, he's now gone so....
This practice facility will be convenient for shelter during thunderstorms, too. That way the fans can return to the stands in a more expedient fashion, after delays. Reminds me of our convocation ceremony 4 years ago.
OK I'm feelin' it s lot more thanks to the video: (thanks AB for the link)
amazing what some effects and music can do...
GO HOKIES!
The effects and music were nice but god why did they have to show the foghorn leghorn helmets. They were the WORST. I get sick a little every time I see them.
That was literally the FIRST thing I thought when I watched the video. I've seen the highlights, why didn't they show more of the building?
Also followed a link from AB... seems like our facility might bear significant resemblance to Navy's facility, designed by the same group - minus the sailboats.
.
.
Damn, it would be distracting to practice there. That is a nice view. Bet they could have some big parties there.
It is even nicer in person!
Before coming to tech I applied to the USNA. And at one point visited Annapolis to speak to the sailing coaches as that was gonna be my sport/thing at the academy. A neat little fact is that they have another building about half that size completely dedicated to sailing, storage, meeting rooms, and their own training facilities. They even have 3 different staffs: 1 for small dinghy racing, 1 for offshore racing, and another whose sole job is to teach all the non sailors how to not be clueless in a sailboat!
With the new Indoor facility slated to be completed in 2015, the program will be more attractive to current and future players. If I was Josh Sweat, Tim Settle, Darvin Taylor, Austin Clark, Torrance Gibson, DeBerry, I would commit to Virginia Tech as soon as possible so I can practice in this beautiful indoor facility.
While it will be very impressive, there are many, many across the country that are equally impressive. Bottom line is similar to our basketball practice facility - it doesn't necessarily give us an edge over any comparable program, but we no longer will be lacking in that feature. I really like how it's projected, and look forward to the completion.
Does anyone else notice that all those expensive windows that use "natural light" will be completely useless when, you know, it rains and the team goes inside?
To me, that's a big whomp.
I wouldn't say that, they would still be letting in light, just not as much. And I'm assuming the new facility will still be used on days when it isn't raining.
And also days when it is really cold outside or there is snow on the ground. You would be surprised how much light you still get even on cloudy days. Whatever light that does comes in will offset the use of electric lights ($).
It will look really cool at night when the interior is lit. Also the view toward the stadium from the interior will be pretty dramatic as seen in the renderings.