USM Portland developments

^The glass is nice on this, like you said, fitting for a map library. The thing I dislike about Wishcamper are the cheap materials (the grayish concrete material reminds me of a smaller, different color version of the nasty Northeastern Dorm nearing completion in Boston. The geothermic power is cool, but still not an attractive building.

The big beef is that the ground floors on both of these new buildings completely disregard pedestrian interaction. The new bike lanes and sidewalks are very nice on Bedford St., but the pedestrians on both sides are forced to deal with blank walls, parking garages, at grade parking lots, more blank walls, and grassy knolls. It's disappointing that more attention couldn't be payed to the people who walk through the area daily. Especially when my tuition money goes into constructing it.
 
^Exactly, it's designed to be seen and noticed by people in cars on 295 (likely part of their expensive new marketing scheme), not students and people on campus. What's the point of all the upgrades (bike lanes, sidewalks expansions, new crosswalks, etc) if the long term structures offer very little to engage the pedestrian?
 
I love the new Wishcamper building. It really looks sharp. Coery has a beautiful picture of the building at night on his site(Thanks Corey.) The new Osher Map Library addition has a large map on the outside of it and I also believe will look great when completed. Great job USM!
 
If anyone is interested, I can share my experience inside the new Wishcamper Center. At the very least it is wonderful to have the Muskie School under one roof. Previously, faculty offices were scattered between the Law Building and one of the campus white houses. The majority of classes were held in the Law building, but not all of them. Muskie's lounge and computer lab in the Law building were ok, but windowless. Many of the classrooms in that building are windowless too.

The new building contains all the faculty offices and classrooms--although I do have a compressed video class in Payson. Every room has windows. My contact with my professors and classmates has increased. One of my favorite changes is the new Muskie library that until now had been in pieces: a professor's impressively vast, private urban planning library in his office, another bookcase in a conference room, and whatever else there was. Now it is all together and I love it.

Muskie shares the building with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The two programs seem to be very compatible because OLLI classes, I think, are all morning and early afternoon, and ours are late afternoon and evening. If it isn't to early to judge, this seems to be good planning.

Really my only petty complaint is that the new building is on the opposite corner of the campus from the Law building, and I live just a few blocks from the Law building. So my walk to class has doubled. No sweat though, I enjoy walking through the campus.

I encourage you USM folks, or even anyone else, to explore the building. It seems to be a pleasant place. I don't know what is becoming of the entire white house Muskie has vacated, or the space, mostly in the law building, that is now free for other uses. USM seriously needs to shuffle this free space around, put health services inside a permanent building, and remove the atrocious health trailer.
 
One can be a municipal or regional planner in local, county or state government or a consultant in a private firm that is contracted by government. I see some recent grads working in conservation too. At least one I know has become a developer. No one seems to be getting into the field for the money, but I think a private consultant would make more than a town planner, and a developer might make more than both.
 
Set to open in September

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I do with they would pave most of this over with grass, or at least make it something other than parking, the parking garage is plenty big to accomodatge everyone.

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