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The chairs were a fantastic compromise between old and new; functional and historic. 

The complete vision isn't clear to me, but there have been a number of parking and traffic changes made effective in the last week or so.  The "old" (not _so_ old) parking ramp by Brandt is now meant to be student only.  The "ocean" behind the union is now faculty/staff only.  Campus Drive in front of Scheele, Alumni, and Lankenau is now one-way east bound.  They seem to have _tried_ to remove the parking spaces, both parallel and slanted, parking spots to the west of Scheele (basically until the intersection with Campus Drive).  Unfortunately, while they removed the white paint from the slant parking, it left obvious marks and they've continued to use them.  They coned it off yesterday.  If they can clean up the parking there it will, hopefully, improve traffic flow there which was sometimes a problem. 

I think the plan was always to eliminate Campus Drive in front of Scheele, Alumni, and Lank. In my opinion that plan makes a lot of sense given the new road behind the dorms. I would have thought that the parking ramp for the Union would need to be constructed before eliminating parking nearby, but I guess that's not the case. Either way, I definitely support the mentality of parking on the outskirts of campus and walking around all day instead of driving. Notre Dame's campus is a great example of how this could work.

I noticed a couple days ago that a big piece of construction equipment that is used for demolition was parked in front of the old 3D building to the east of the Moeller Funeral Home. Does anyone know if there is a plan to tear down that building or are they just parking the equipment there for the time being?

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4679211,-87.0448798,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJJV4EqVhFup1Qs06WLZ3bQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

(from April 2013)
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/porter/valparaiso/major-changes-planned-at-vu-in-coming-years/article_d6b53ee2-1015-5d92-93a0-7c299947acda.html?mobile_touch=true

This article from 2013 indicates that plans are to demolish the building and use the area for parking as part of making the university a "walking campus."

It's so far from campus, I'm not sure how any parking would be useful, let alone making it a "walkable" part of campus.

I rather like the person statues. Here is a video from creator about the statues on the VU campus. She is a very renowned artist. 
https://youtu.be/WLM8lZdMAO8

First look inside from the Valpo Chapel Instagram page:

https://instagram.com/valpochapel/

While I can't match the eloquence and artistic knowledge of valpopal, my question is: why didn't they build the addition out of BRICK?

Paul

That is a good question. You can see that they integrated stone similar to that of the main chapel, but it is curious as to why no red brick was incorporated. In this photo, you can see the attempts to match the stone (which look quite similar). I also see some of the green of both structures playing off each other. But maybe the roundness of the addition provides too much of a contrast to the original.

The Valparaiso University Facebook page posted some new photos. The exterior looks mostly complete. I'm not sure how I feel about the black brick exterior on the sides (see second picture below), but overall it looks great. Any other opinions out there?

Looks like it's almost complete. The photo has some strange effects from being a panoramic photo, but otherwise it looks great. I'm loving all of the glass. From the Valparaiso University Alumni Facebook page:

Any more news on this? Details? I searched for a while to find a rendering but was unsuccessful. Perhaps we're looking at a "late" summer ground-breaking? 

Apparently, Valpo and UIC were the only schools to vote against this proposal. Can anyone confirm?

Facebook fans don't like it either, if you read the comments on the Valpo Men's Basketball page and the Horizon League page. The only ones who seem to be in favor of the move are OU and UDM fans. 

Very cool! I'm sure many VU students have had experience with the program, so his message should resonate with the students and families.

He's going places......good for him and Valpo! 

Thanks for the info everyone.

I know the university already has plans for the field house/arena, but that location seems pretty ideal given the access to Lincolnway, ample parking, and across from the dorms. 

With basketball season winding down, I thought this would be a good time to bring this up. VU recently posted an updated campus map on their website, and I found one particular aspect interesting. If you take a look at the map, the buildings shaded in brown appear to be buildings owned by VU. On the north side of the map (highlighted in red) is an abandoned building that appears to have been a department store or warehouse at some point. Did VU acquire this building and/or the land? Was it at all related to Porter Hospital and maybe was part of that acquisition?



I also took some screenshots from Google Maps. As you can see, it's just north of campus and near Trails Inn Liquors.

Our 3-point percentage is better than our free-throw percentage. Not sure what to think about that.

The groundbreaking for this project is scheduled for Monday, March 16.

Very rough half to watch....hopefully we keep the momentum coming into the second half.

Very cool! Best of luck to him. 

Nice find, Vale O. I'm pleasantly surprised by the design, but we still could have done better. It's still a huge step forward for Valpo Greek Life and will help revitalize that part of campus. 

It's nice to see the university feature the Horizon League regular season champions on the homepage as well. 

www.valpo.edu

This may not be news to everyone, but it was to me. I found the full Campus Master Plan (titled the "Technical Report"), as opposed to the "Executive Summary" that was passed around. It's 255 pages long, but it probably has some great information in it. I plan on reading it and will point out any new information I find.

http://issuu.com/smithgroupjjr/docs/valparaiso_university

Great photos as usual, Valpopal! Love the ones of the ARC filled with people! 

Thanks for the updates and insights, agibson.