When I went to BYU, Part II

As a continuation to a previous post about what has changed at BYU in the past few years, it keeps changing!

Yesterday Chris took Leah on an outing on the BYU campus. She loves seeing all the buildings and statues, playing in the fountains, feeding the ducks, etc. And Chris loves showing her around our alma-mater and indoctrinating her at a young age to grow up to be a Cougar. He took a quick look at the newly built Commons at the Cannon Center. It is a brand new building, and apparently pretty impressive--I simply assumed it was an addition to the original Cannon Center where I literally flipped burgers and pizza dough at Cosmo's and Tomassito's, and where Chris served up food for hungry freshman and was a late-night janitor.

Today I drove past and saw that the original Cannon center was demolished...today! I could see in through its wounded walls at the chandeliers still hanging from the ceiling in the dining room! No doubt, Cosmo's is gone. This makes me just a little bit sad. I mean, how can I look from where I've been to how far I've come if where I've been isn't there anymore?

Other things that have changed in the past few months:

They finally tore down the KMB. This was the dance studio/History faculty building and home of the Smith Institute for LDS History. You had to leave the building and walk around the outside and up the steps to get to the other half of the building, and it was always way too hot in half of the rooms. It was about time. I guess if I'd spent a lot of time there, I would be sad to see it go, too, but I always just thought it was a really annoying building to try to find anything in. Apparently, they expanded the Richards Building (one of the athletic buildings) to make room for the offices that would be displaced by the KMB demolition, another change that has happened since I went to BYU.

The Tanner building is huge! It was just a square box with window stripes when I went there, and now there is a huge addition on the west side, plus a fancy underground parking garage to the north and new entrance from Bulldog. Wow. Here's a live feed with a view of the new addition.

B-77 was condemned many years ago and is finally being demolished in three stages. Lately, both side arms of the U-shaped building have been removed, the ground has been leveled, and a steel frame of a new building is under construction in their place. Does anybody know what they are building? My prediction would be that they are making a new home for IT services--a prediction based on my main project as a staff-member for OIT in 2006. They'd have to make a new building to move all the offices to before they could tear down all of B77, which would explain why some of it is still intact. Just a prediction. (The other uses for B77--early childhood education and the cooking and sewing labs were relocated when the JFSB was completed, which by the way was just in time for me to graduate). I wonder why I don't feel sad about losing B77 like I do about the Cannon Center? I probably spent just as much time there...

LDS Philanthropies has a fancy new building next to the B77 project. (Seen under construction in the above picture). Oh, and most of Deseret Towers have been demolished, but I don't think I ever set foot in one of them more than once. I think the Faculty Office Building is being torn down too.

What else has changed?

I have to admit that BYU's use of space is pretty impressive. They don't bother keeping old run-down buildings, and they consider the cost-effectiveness of new buildings versus maintaining really old buildings. And no department ever becomes homeless in the process. You gotta hand it to BYU for continuing to move forward--even though it means that I get left behind!