Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Roosevelt U's Goodman Center Looks Nice but Small

Image of Goodman Center at the Southeast corner of Congress and Wabash (photo via Curbed Chicago)
A couple of weeks ago Curbed Chicago checked in on the new Goodman Center, Roosevelt University's new Basketball facility, at 50 E. Congress Parkway:
Designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), the new athletic facility will serve as the future home of Roosevelt University's basketball team, the Lakers. Quite a bit of work has transpired since our visit to the site in late June. Exterior work is nearly complete, and we're on board with the irregularly fenestrated facade, which matches up very closely with the renderings. In addition to a 500-seat gym with retractable bleachers, the 27,834-square foot structure will house administrative offices, a training room, student lounge, meeting rooms, and locker rooms. It is scheduled to open its doors in December.
It sure was completed fast and generally speaking we also like the looks of the building.  While it serves it's purpose, it doesn't really add much to the Sloop in our opinion.  However, it does take away one more empty lot which we like.

The strangest thing in our mind is how small the facility is.  It seems like an expensive structure on a very prime piece of real estate to build a 500 seat gym.  My high-school teams gym drew more than 500 people. If they built a bigger gym, maybe they could have hosted concerts or something.

Apparently they know something we don't.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i walked by this the other day and loved the exterior design. The yucky brown sauce on the sidewalk is what you have to watch out for

Anonymous said...

WTF? what is yucky brown sauce?

Anonymous said...

unfortunately he is speaking of the "issue" at this corner--- street people have been defacating there at night as some sort of protest against this building. Apparently it was a well know squatter spot before this was erected

Anonymous said...

wrong, I actually talked with police last week about this because we were all getting alittle tired of seeing human poo on the sidewalks. Apparently there was a strike on this corner and some people were actually throwing feces at the strikers but this has since been resolved and there is no more brown slop on the sidewalk

Anonymous said...

You people kill me with your crazy anti-urban scare stories. Naperville is waiting for you.