One new campus building opened this spring while the status of several other construction projects ranges from conception to completion.
At the site of the original Notre Dame Hammes Bookstore now stands a much larger, $14 million gothic structure housing the Coleman Family Center for Campus Ministry and the James and Leah Rae Morse Center for Academic Services. Expected to open in April, the building has separate entrances for the Coleman Center facing the South Quad and for the Morse Center facing the lakes.
The Coleman Center houses Campus Ministry facilities for programs in spirituality, retreats and campus liturgies, all of which used to be confined to the first floor of Badin Hall (next door), plus a chapel, rehearsal space for campus choirs and a classroom for religious education.
The Morse Center consists of offices for the First Year of Studies program, formerly in a small, 146-year-old building next to Brownson Hall, and for Academic Services for Student Athletes, which had been in Brownson since 1995.
The Coleman-Morse building also contains a computer cluster, student social space, a satellite office of the Center for Social Concerns, and a room named for Jerry and Dorene Hammes (of campus bookstore fame) in honor of their financial support of Campus Ministry.
Other current construction projects:
- The Marie P. DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. The ceremonial groundbreaking is scheduled for May on this long-awaited facility at the south end of campus. The $55 million structure will house a 900-seat concert hall, a 350-seat main stage theater, a 200-seat cinema, and two other performance spaces. It’s expected to be finished in 2003.
- South Bend Center for Medical Education. This building, planned for the southeast corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Angela Boulevard, will house the joint Notre Dame and Indiana University medical school, which since 1971 has been located in the basement of Haggar Hall and a World War II-era Quonset hut behind Haggar. Construction has been delayed by problems removing asbestos from the building that used to stand there, the Northern Indiana State Development Center. No completion date has been set. Also moving to the new building, from Nieuwland, will be Notre Dame’s Walther Cancer Research Center.
- Hesburgh Center for International Studies addition. Work is scheduled to begin in May on this $2.6 million project to add office space for the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
— Visiting faculty housing. The University is building 24 apartments for visiting professors in the Fischer Graduate Residences townhouse complex. Severe winter weather has pushed back the targeted completion date to next spring.
Nearing completion:
— The Philosophy and Theology Building, which will provide offices for professors in those departments. The building is expected to open in August.
— Renovation of the Hayes-Healy and Hurley buildings. The mathematics department and international studies will begin relocating to these connected buildings this spring. The renovation project began with asbestos removal in February 2000.
Still on the drawing board: an elaborate $70 million science teaching facility planned for the east side of Juniper Road just north of the Joyce Center. Construction isn’t scheduled to begin until 2003.