3 halls open around Notre Dame Stadium, completing project

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) - With the opening Monday of three academic halls attached to Notre Dame Stadium, the university's massive $400 million Campus Crossroads project is complete, integrating the iconic football venue with everyday student life.

While portions of Duncan, O'Neill and Corbett Hall opened last fall to accommodate stadium improvements, the academic portions were recently completed in time for students returning this week from winter break.

The nine-floor Duncan Student Center, on the west side of the stadium, features new recreation, academic and extracurricular spaces for Notre Dame students, faculty and staff.

The facility isn't a replacement for the LaFortune Student Center, but rather billed as a complement to the long-time student nucleus.

A towering brick structure with ample windows intended to maximize natural light, the Duncan Student Center is expected to serve a wide range of needs for the university's student body. It features meeting rooms, two floors of recreational sports facilities, student media space, a rock climbing wall, indoor track, career services center, seventh-floor ballroom and three new "micro-restaurants" that will be open to the public.

The restaurants include Southeast-Asian inspired cuisine at Star Ginger, fresh farm-to-table products at Modern Market and coffee, gelato, crepes and baked-daily pastries at Hagerty Family Café.

Chris Abayasinghe, director of campus dining, said prior to opening the three restaurants the university served about 2.1 million dining hall meals and 2 million retail meals a years.

"We expect about a 20 percent lift on that now," Abayasinghe said.

With a focus on menu authenticity and fresh ingredients, Abayasinghe said the new dining options are designed to fit a diverse student body with expanding global palates.

"I was just stopping by tables, and there are people having pho (a Vietnamese soup)," Abayasinghe said. "And they were specifically saying how much it tastes like pho back home."

Just above the restaurants is space for Notre Dame's student magazine and yearbook as well as its radio and television programs, bringing most of student media into the same location. The shared space is encourages collaboration across mediums, said broadcast media specialist Laurie McFadden.

On the south end of the stadium is O'Neill Hall, which is now home to the Department of Music and Sacred Music at Notre Dame program. With a 170-seat recital hall, music library, music labs and department offices, the facility features state-of-the-art recording equipment and a new "White Box" room that can incorporate lighting and video projection into music performances.

To the east of the stadium is Corbett Family Hall, nearly a mirror image of the Duncan Student Center from the outside, but serving a much different purpose inside.

Academics and faith are the primary focus of the facilities contained within the lower floors of the Corbett Family Hall. The first floor holds the 2,000 square foot Martin Media Center, which will support faith-based productions and live programming, in addition to academic lectures and performing arts shows.

The second floor holds the new home for the university's anthropology department. Professor Sue Sheridan said she used to have to plan her day around spending time in the lab or her office, which were in separate locations. Now, with her office and lab across the hall from each other, working to conduct research on bones from thousands of years ago has become easier and more streamlined. The inclusion of the different subfields in one facility is designed to increase collaboration, developing an department of "integrated anthropology."

Floors three, four and five of the Corbett Family Hall will hold the psychology department, which decided to hold off on moving in until after this year's commencement, and floors six through nine will be a part of football press coverage and outdoor seating.

Erin Hoffmann Harding, vice president for student affairs, said she hopes the Duncan Student Center and other buildings will be molded by the student body.

"I cannot wait," she said, "to see how our students will bring this facility to life and use its spaces to further enrich and enliven our campus community."

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Source: South Bend Tribune

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Information from: South Bend Tribune, http://www.southbendtribune.com