BU Development Thread

bdurden said:
Absolutely a waste of space on a prime lot -- which is why I believe that there will be more to this than just a dining hall and student services. Come to think of it though, this is a small lot on Bay State Road and there may be height restrictions (just speculating) that will keep the building in line with the brownstones.
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I read somewhere on the BU website that there may be residential space on the upper floors of this new building. No details were given.
 
West Campus' dining hall is amazing. I've eaten at Towers and Warren and neither come close. And to further put this into perspective, anything at BU was miles ahead of the crap I ate while at UB -- University at Buffalo.
 
^^^ The same could be said about umass amhersts food from fall 99 - spring 01. Absolute worse, lowest grade of food allowed for humans consumption.
 
ant8904 said:
I can give a bit more detailed. There's an observation that the quality of food increases east to west. So, the general feel is, in terms of taste, Miles < Shelton < Towers < Warren < West (GSU is debate as a dining hall and it can screw with the east-west view).

Anyways, back to the subject, that view is dying as changes came Towers have bettered themselves. I also noted that Shelton's late night dining have bettered too, I would even say superior to Warren's (except maybe the fries, I don't know how good it is at Shelton at earlier times).

Each dining hall does have a unique feel. Shelton does still retain the hotel feel. The sentiment have changed and there are people who say Tower's food is better than Warren's, though the basement thing does depresses the place a bit. I can't give an opinion of Myles, it been too long, but I heard it is still bad (one person I know commentated that taking a girl to Warren who eats regularly there may equal to a date). Warren is, in general, pretty good, though I never find their stir fry ever attractive (while everywhere else seems pretty good). West is generally hailed as the best.
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Myles has the highest paid chef at BU, and I consider it to have the best quality. West and Warren might have more choices, but when you're comparing the evenings food available at all locations, Myles has the best one. Theres also never a line at the east campus dorms. Ive timed lines at over 15 minutes at warren and west.


When I went to BU, I lived at the Hyatt my freshman year. The shuttle took us only to Warren, and even then I would walk the two extra blocks to eat at towers. Less crowded, better food, and better atmosphere.

Fun fact: Even though BU loves to talk about the "made to order" food, most dinner food is prepared by 2pm and then sits in warmers until 6pm.

The only dining hall at BU that uses fresh meat for hamburgers is myles, everybody else uses frozen (cost cutting)


The BU administration never has student interests at heart. The reasons for consolidation:

Cutting costs (less staff)
Sells better during tours (students on tours think "wow it looks good" and not "damn thats a 10 minute walk from the dorm I will be put into")

Sort of like with the new Stuvi dorms. Yes, they look great....but the rooms are all smaller than the older dorms and cost more.

Recent examples of consolidations that have only hurt students:

-When the new west campus gym opened, the gyms at shelton and Warren were closed and the Myles and south campus gyms had their hours cut in half.
---The shelton gym became an empty room for two years and is now bike storage
-Myles has a squash court. It's never been used by students
-Last semester BU shut all computer labs except one in the library. These spaces now sit locked and unused, except the south campus study center....which became bike storage.
-A south campus clothes washing center opened a few years ago, and most buildings had their washers removed. Everybody loves walking down the street to wash their clothes.
 
Hell, every 99% of restaurants worldwide have the dinner made by 2 p.m. BU is one of the only schools I've seen that actually "cooks" it in front of you. I don't know about the burgers or fries, but the stir-fry and grilled food were both heated up in front of me, and the ingredients looked pretty damn fresh.
 
UMass Amherst began cooking food in front of students too, stir fry, paninis, omelets, among others. In the four years I was there food went from soup kitchen to almost restaurant quality.

I feel no sympathy for the BU kids if they consolidate the dining halls. I had to walk up hill through the snow both ways to get breakfast everyday out there.
 
jass said:
Myles has the highest paid chef at BU, and I consider it to have the best quality. West and Warren might have more choices, but when you're comparing the evenings food available at all locations, Myles has the best one. Theres also never a line at the east campus dorms. Ive timed lines at over 15 minutes at warren and west.


When I went to BU, I lived at the Hyatt my freshman year. The shuttle took us only to Warren, and even then I would walk the two extra blocks to eat at towers. Less crowded, better food, and better atmosphere.
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How long ago have you been to Warren? I just need to ask as I know Warren got an upgrade with the renovation a few years back. I think Towers has caught on in terms of food after Warren's upgrade, but Towers I don't see how it can compete in atmosphere when it is in a basement. The only way I can see Towers can is Warren before renovation where the one picture I saw looks like it a middle school cafeteria.

jass said:
Fun fact: Even though BU loves to talk about the "made to order" food, most dinner food is prepared by 2pm and then sits in warmers until 6pm.

The only dining hall at BU that uses fresh meat for hamburgers is myles, everybody else uses frozen (cost cutting)
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I'll go by Myles again then, its reputation is not high, but maybe it went in some decline for a while or bad hearsay.


jass said:
The BU administration never has student interests at heart. The reasons for consolidation:

Cutting costs (less staff)
Sells better during tours (students on tours think "wow it looks good" and not "damn thats a 10 minute walk from the dorm I will be put into")
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True. Hate to admit it, but the administration never seems to demonstrate a desire to spoil the students. Many BU students have developed an attitude that they only work like a cooperation work to shake down students and impede us in every way. My reasoning sees that they only think about cutting cost, and cutting more cost, and cutting more cost. There's nothing wrong with being miserly, they go too far and have created an attitude that the administration is spiteful and greedy.

The reasoning for an east campus dining hall and student center is not to raise student quality of life, but to reduce cost by consolidating 3 dining halls. The fact that administration keep saying things environmental sustainability and bettering food just piss off everyone even more.


jass said:
Sort of like with the new Stuvi dorms. Yes, they look great....but the rooms are all smaller than the older dorms and cost more.
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Need to go verify that. I'm familiar that stuvi 1 is extremely nice and can compete with older brownstone dorms of Bay State (South Campus, with a few exceptions, cannot, at least till the day they are renovated).



jass said:
Recent examples of consolidations that have only hurt students:

-When the new west campus gym opened, the gyms at shelton and Warren were closed and the Myles and south campus gyms had their hours cut in half.
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I must disagree. The gyms at Warren and South at least are a joke. I have no need for a bunch of Elipticals and treadmills. Correct me if there were additional rooms before that contains weight rooms, but the two large gymnasiums for ball sports, practice rooms , upstairs track course, and weight rooms outweight the tiny "gym" of Warren and South(which is useful for me for the fencing team I'm on). I don't know anything about Myles.

jass said:
---The shelton gym became an empty room for two years and is now bike storage
-Myles has a squash court. It's never been used by students
-Last semester BU shut all computer labs except one in the library. These spaces now sit locked and unused, except the south campus study center....which became bike storage.
-A south campus clothes washing center opened a few years ago, and most buildings had their washers removed. Everybody loves walking down the street to wash their clothes.
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The rest I must agree. With exception of the computer rooms, they are not locked and unused. They have been renovated as group study rooms and have about 2-3 computers terminals, it is really nice and used heavily. To be honest, also, many of the student haven't done work on the computer terminals at all, mostly used it for facebook and printing, just ask the students. Many conversations have came up, and everytime, a person will bring up that are not really doing work anyway and everyone have to hang their heads that he's right.
 
^Which is precisely why BU consolidated the computer labs and then built in computer stations all over campus where students can easily walk up and check their email, get on facebook, or whatever they like.

The Warren and Shelton gyms were absolutely a joke. The University spends $50 million on a new student complex that includes the best facilities for students at any university in the country, and is accused of not thinking in the best interest of the students. Hop on the T and take the 3-4 minute ride to West campus, or, hop on the BU bus they started up a few years ago.

Further, I imagine that it is economically more feasible to consolidate the dining halls on East campus, that said, to say that BU is not looking out for it's students seems rather unrealistic. They are continually building new, modern facilities, upgrading spaces all over campus, in order for students to enjoy living in a modern, urban campus setting. If they can do this, and consolidate their interests and resources, they are smart.
 
Nobody needs air conditioning in London --least of all, students.
 
That's what I was thinking. It never gets above 75 degrees there in summer. Bizarre.
 
I don't know if it's because of a Boston Globe NIMBY bias, but I came away from that article thinking BU was the bully there.
 
Shepard said:
I don't know if it's because of a Boston Globe NIMBY bias, but I came away from that article thinking BU was the bully there.
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Of course they are. Read the end of the article, they installed the thing and THEN applied for permits.

It's typical BU. Who cares what the students or neighbors think? I look forward to the next budget cut announcement while they continue to spend on useless crap like AC in London.


I was in London this past May. Had to wear a sweater most of the time.
 
It sounds like the residents should be complaining to the city of London for not letting BU install the units belowgrade instead of turning their complaints to BU.

This sort of talk is not going to bully BU out of the neighborhood: ?BU is a foreign university. They are guests in this country, and they haven?t behaved in a neighborly way. I am ashamed of them.??
 
ablarc said:
Sounds like they have computers from the Sixties.
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A colleague recently told me that cooling is more critical than ever now. More heat is generated from today's smaller server rooms than from larger rooms even a few years ago. Think about your iphone and multiply that by heat by a lot and then factor 100% run-time expectation, bigger network/internet use demands and server (not desktop) file storage.
 
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