The new student center for the Norfolk Campus of TCC is in the designing stages. I attended the charrette today and they certainly have some great ideas. It is supposed to have a food court/cafe space, a fitness center, a child-care facility, office space for student organizations (SGA gets a huge office), study areas, conference/activity rooms for student groups, and a really cool building. It will be 4 or 5 stories tall and sit on half of the lot between the Norva/Kelly’s Building and the Martin Building. Their goal is for it to be a very open building with alot of glass. They will also redesign the plaza. If I can get some pictures of the concepts, I’ll put them on here.
Virginia Beach is scheduled to get a similar building next.

I know its a little far away for our area, but check this out. Designed for cities where space is an absolute premium or nearly non-existent, these parking garages are completely mechanical and/or computerized. You drop your car at the front and it ‘parks it for you. They fit them in so tight that you can usually double the amount of parking spots you can get out of a garage.

How Mechanization Can Help Cities Rethink Parking

Plan for robotic garage may give parking a lift

They are relatively new in the US, but there are thousands in the rest of the world.

Instead of delaying funding for a new Court complex in Norfolk, the City should be putting in extra. If you have ever been in the court buildings, you would know why. When I went in for jury duty, I arrived right on time. At that time, we were asked to please wait…. while they walked the inmates past us, down the hallway to their respective places. I though to myself, “thats great, have all the inmates get a good look at all of the prospective jurors.” But what about the judges? And the witnesses? They share these same halls. Also the security of these building is stuck in a past age. Sure there are metal detectors and wands, but do they work? Well, lets see. Last time I went to the General District Court Building for a traffic ticket, I go up to the metal detector. I empty my pockets of all my metal; keys, pen, over $3 in change, I even have a key chain made out of a spent bullet shell. I put all of my metal into the little container and hand it off to the deputy. Now at this point the deputy would normally carry my metal around the metal detector and then ask me to step through. Instead, the deputy pulled my container of metal right through the metal detector and it DID NOT GO OFF. An entire bucket of metal and there was not so much as a beep. Thats good, I thought, as I walked to my courtroom. Then, as I wait to go into my room, I walk past file cabinets full of court documents. Not fancy, special cabinets designed for security, but normal office cabinets. Sure they have a lock, but it is nowhere near the caliber that is warranted by contents that are meant to be secured.
Its glitches and failures such as these that drive home the need for an updated court complex. Our judges put in long hours of stressful work. They should not go in every day feeling in danger of becoming a victim of a desperate criminal.

As everyone has heard for the past week or so, The VA Pilot completely screwed up its student art show. After 2 different art experts chose two different works of art as winner, they picked some random employees to judge. The first winner was a nude self-portrait and the second was a nude pregnant torso. Both of these were very artistically done and deserved a prize, but the Pilot decided that nudity was inappropriate for a student art gallery (even though the first painting did not even show anything). Regardless, even though the Pilot eventually ran a picture of the pregnant torso, it refused to run a picture of the self-portrait. They claimed that because it was a self-portrait of a minor they couldn’t run it. It was aired on the TV news stations and it was a very modest painting. This said, I must thank Walt Taylor, the artist of the Sketchbook in the ‘Sunday Forum’ section of the paper. He got his own sketch of the painting into his feature. Thank You, Mr. Taylor, for being the only one at the Pilot not afraid to actually print on controversial topics. The rest of the paper seems content at having mediocre news that comes from everyone else except its own writers. Maybe one day we can get a newspaper that actually can show us what good journalism is all about.

PS- He also mentioned the HRT transfer point:
….although he fails to mention that its not entirely HRT’s fault…

As some of you may recall, I made a map of my thoughts on a Regional light Rail System. I have made some modifications. Please view and leave your thoughts.