Friday, September 30, 2011
The Rat's Gone!
The University of Miami has begun the construction of a new, state of the art, 119,000-square-foot Student Activities Center on its Coral Gables campus thanks to a lead gift of $20 million from the Fairholme Foundation. Fronting UM’s Lake Osceola, the new center (which is being built under LEED Silver classification, meaning it is built "green" and energy efficient) will include various gathering places, programming space, a student organizations suite, retail outlets and a new Rathskeller on the ground floor. The now gone original Rathskeller was demolished in June of this year to make room for this new structure. I used to hang out at the Rat for lunch and I am pretty upset that the new site under construction has resulted in the removal of all the sapodilla trees at the edge of lake Osceola.
I am not familiar with the property, but ironic isn't it? The building is built "green" yet beautiful trees are unnecessarily cut down. I have seen this done before with "green" construction. The label is embraced, but not the spirit.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you are truly building "green", wouldn't at least ideally the older building have been extensively renovated and added on to in a green manner? Less of a "footprint" this way.
We are such a throw away society. We seem to fear the old. Or find the old inconvenient.
This makes me almost sick with grief that they would remove these beautiful trees and terraces! Jesus! What are they thinking?
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