Oct. 1, 2004
By Dennis K. Brown
Associate Director, News and Information
The Notre Dame skyline once again has a familiar look – the Golden Dome, Sacred Heart Basilica, Hesburgh Library and, after a yearlong absence, construction cranes.
Due to a sluggish U.S. economy, the University’s Trustees put a halt to new campus construction in the fall of 2002. Work was stopped on a building for Notre Dame Security/Police and the post office and no new projects were approved. An exception was made for the Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, which was nearing completion and fully funded.
By last fall, as the economy improved, the time was right to end the construction interruption and launch two new significant projects. At their October 2003 meeting, the Trustees approved construction of the Jordan Hall of Science and the Don F. and Flora Guglielmino Family Athletics Center. They also allowed work to resume on the security and postal building.
Jordan Hall, which now is rapidly rising along Juniper Road just north of the Joyce Center, has been underwritten with a leadership gift from John W. “Jay” Jordan II, a 1969 alumnus and a Trustee since 1993.
At more than 200,000 square feet, the $70 million Jordan Hall will include 40 undergraduate laboratories for biology, chemistry and physics; two 250-seat lecture halls; a 150-seat multimedia lecture hall; two classrooms; 22 faculty offices; offices for preprofessional (premed) studies; and a greenhouse, herbarium and observatory. S/L/A/M Collaborative designed Jordan Hall, which is scheduled for completion in summer 2006.
Jordan is founder of The Jordan Company (TJC), a private investment firm that acquires, manages and builds companies for the TJC partnership account, and is chairman and chief executive officer of the Chicago-based holding company Jordan Industries Inc. He previously funded construction of the Jordan Auditorium in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, and currently chairs the Trustees’ investment committee.
The Guglielmino Center has been underwritten with a gift from the late Don F. Guglielmino and his wife, Flora.
“The Gug,” as it quickly has become known, is located next to the Irish football practice fields near the Loftus Center. The 95,840-square-foot facility will house the football program’s locker rooms, offices and meeting rooms, as well as provide Notre Dame’s 800 student-athletes with enhanced space for training and sports medicine, strength and conditioning programs, and equipment. The project will be completed next summer.
A longtime supporter of Notre Dame, Guglielmino attended the University in the 1939-40 academic year. After the death of his father, he transferred to Stanford University and then left school to enlist in the Army Air Corps. He served in the Pacific theater during World War II and went on to a successful career in business and banking. Though he spent just one year at Notre Dame as a student, Guglielmino had a lifelong love for the University. In addition to his commitment to Irish football, he and Flora supported the scholarship fund of the Notre Dame Club of Los Angeles and were benefactors to the University’s Institute for Church Life.
The scaffolding is beginning to come off the 40,000-square-foot security/police and post office building. Designed in the traditional collegiate Gothic style of architecture common to Notre Dame, the facility will both improve the aesthetics of the East entrance to campus and, upon completion in December, pave the way for future construction in the areas on campus where the security/police and post office buildings currently are located.
Also on the construction horizon is the closure of Juniper Road through the campus. Earlier this year, St. Joseph County approved Notre Dame’s proposal to close the north-south thoroughfare and shift traffic to a new road to be constructed next to the eastern edge of the University. The project also calls for the realignment of Edison Road and changes to several other streets through and adjacent to Notre Dame. The closure of Juniper will improve pedestrian safety and, long term, allow for construction of new residence halls.
The current and future construction means that cranes will remain on the skyline as Notre Dame continues to provide world-class teaching, research, residential and athletic facilities for faculty and students.