Blue White Illustrated

Master plan brings PSU's aspirations into focus P enn State officials were laying out the details of their long-awaited facilities master plan when an athletics administrator leaned over to me to offer this: Dauer Road, a nondescript short- cut around the Bryce Jordan Center that is set to become a major artery through the university's proposed athletics core, could be easily changed to Bauer Road. All I would need was a checkbook and a pen with sufficient ink for a one and plenty of zeroes and commas. It was a joke – sort of. A 17-month endeavor unveiled March 13 in a public presentation at Hintz Alumni Hall on cam- pus, the Penn State Athletics Facilities Master Plan took another step forward with the dissemi- nation of a series of dazzling renderings depicting a largely revamped University Park campus. In- cluded among the images was a centralized head- quarters for Intercollegiate Athletics called the Center of Excellence, a multisport indoor practice facility, new tennis and aquatics facilities and an improved Jeffrey Field – and those were only the first of many projects that are envisioned in the wide-ranging overhaul of Penn State's athletics infrastructure. Beyond those high-priority projects, university officials want to give the basketball programs their own standalone practice facility and make im- provements to athletic venues across campus, from the Bryce Jordan Center to the Blue and White golf courses. And then there's the big one, the project that fans and media have been buzzing about ever since Penn State partnered with the CENTER OF EXCELLENCE Envisioned as a hub for stu- dent-athletes and coaches, the five-story, 450,000- square-foot building would be constructed on the site of the current East Area Locker Room and would connect to a new multisport indoor practice facility. Image courtesy of Penn State Athletics FACILITIES A BOLD VISION A N A L Y S I S B Y N A T E B A U E R

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