Zankel Center hard-hat tour a hit

Alumni and guests look over the Zankel site

Among the Reunion 2008 events on Friday was a hard-hat tour of the construction site of Skidmore's new gateway building, the Arthur Zankel Music Center. Now rising on steel beams, the 55,000-square-foot building will house a 600-seat recital hall, classrooms, offices, and practice rooms, made possible in large part by a bequest from the late Arthur Zankel, a Skidmore parent and trustee who strongly believed in the transformative power of the arts. Music department professor and chair Thomas Denny, kicking off the tour, said he expects his department to occupy the hall in January of 2010.

A party of eight including alumni, spouses, and Skidmore staff donned brightly colored hard hats, checked out posters depicting architectural renderings, and set off through the dusty, jumbled construction site past giant cranes and piles of steel beams. "You're looking at the building's skeleton," explained project supervisor Paul Lundberg, who led the tour. "We have 350 tons of steel up and 350 tons to go. The building has so much steel not only for structural soundness but, just as importantly, for supporting the acoustical elements that are also integral to the design." More insider details from Lundberg: Workers poured more than 3,000 yards of concrete, recycled 5,000 cubic yards of rock into drainage stone, and repurposed the blacktop paving from the old Filene parking lot. Green credits include the building's angular shape, designed by the architectural firm Ewing Cole to minimize its footprint on the land, and geothermal heating via ground-source heat pumps.

Circling the site, Lundberg pointed out future classrooms, the main entrance, and the soaring recital hall, whose balconies, light and sound equipment supports, and dramatic three-story window overlooking South Park were already in place, sketched out in steel beams. "From up on the hill the Zankel Center is hard to envision, but from down here, it all starts to make sense," said Lundberg. Former Skidmore English/music major Amylou Porter '88, now the operations manager for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, agreed with Lundberg: "Walking around the building, you could imagine the architectural rendering and really see it."