This
artist's rendering shows the new campus post office and headquarters
for Security/Police, which is being built on the former basketball
courts in front of Stepan Center.
The three-story, $8.6 million building was designed by Moake
Park Group of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in the collegiate gothic style
of the Eck Center and Coleman-Morse Center. The post office will
be on the first floor.
Scheduled for completion in late summer 2003, the building is
needed because the current post office sits on land earmarked
for a planned expansion of the Law School, and because a new hotel,
the Notre Dame Inn, will be built on the site of the existing
police station. The banging heard around campus all summer came
from the driving of 165 steel piles into the soil at the site
of the new building, which is too soft to support a conventional
foundation.
Summer is always a busy season for campus construction, but
2002 was especially hectic as many roads and parking lots were
closed temporarily to permit the laying of utility lines to the
new buildings. Starting with those closest to completion, here
are the other buildings in progress and their scheduled completion
dates: a two-story addition to Stepan Chemistry Hall (November
1); the Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts (August
2004); the Science Learning Center, next to the Joyce Center and
in front of the Rolfs Sports Recreation Center (August 2005);
the Notre Dame Inn (2005). No timetable has been set for the Law
School addition.