It’s been a year and a half in the making, and technically it’s not done. They are supposed to remove those two power poles in the middle of the parking lot, but I’ve been waiting a month and nothing’s happened. I got tired of taking identical pictures every couple days, so I’m finishing it now.
The building itself is complete, and occupied now. So here it is:
The finishing touches are going on the Westminster dorms, now known as “Westminster on the Draw”.
These two pictures went up sometime today.
Takes some real guts (or maybe 4 years of free tuition?) to allow them to put a 3 storey picture of you up on the side of a building. Especially when that building is on the corner of one of the busier intersections in the city.
Yeah, if it was on the corner of Downington Ave and Lake Street, but 21st South and 13th East? Right at what is basically the first exit from the east on I-80 going into the city.* That guy’s face is the first thing many visitors are going to notice in Salt Lake City, and when they inevitably pull into the Chevron the second thing they’ll notice is her face.
“Hey, isn’t that you on the side of that Westminster building?”
The fires just outside of the Salt Lake Valley may finally be out, but the smoke remains, and the spectacular sunsets continue.
*There is actually one before, but it’s right at the mouth of the canyon and a lot of the visitors at the Chevron I worked at didn’t realize there was even a gas station there.
The whole thing started in April of last year. A year and 4 months later students are moving in to the new dorms for Westminster College.
I went over there with Jim after he got off work at the Chevron to take a look around inside. There was a welcoming committee, checking in the new students, so I asked if we could take a look around. Not alone, but one of the students manning the front door was willing to take us for a tour.
All I can say is: pretty nice. We saw bunk beds, like in the blurry picture above, and thought that we’d been lied to when we were told each student would have their own room.
We were wrong about being lied to. Each student has their own bedroom, a tiny one that I’m guessing is about 10’ by 6’ (3.5m by 2m). To save room, the beds are raised up so that you can sit at the desk beneath it. Weird, but ingenious.
There are 4 bedrooms to each suite, which has 2 bathrooms, an average apartment-sized kitchen, small dining room and a nice sized living room. (The floor plan above is supposed to be to scale, but since I recreated it from memory it’s just an estimate- click to enlarge.)
The appliances aren’t cheapo ones either, they are all as good or better than I have in my own home. Wisely, they have solid, well built furniture for the dining and living room areas.
Cost? I was told by someone who had no clue that they were charging $1,500 a month. The guy who gave us the tour said that they go for $7,000 for the 10-month school year.
$700 a month, your own bedroom, a bathroom you have to share with only one other person, a nice kitchen, comfortable living area and a clothes washer and dryer. Not bad. I think I’ll rent out my house and move in there.
Got up this morning and it was a little bit chilly out.
But I decided to go out and get some pictures of the Westminster construction, despite the cold, because of the new snow.
Then I went over to the park and saw the hill alive with sledders,
the birds flying,
the water flowing,
and the “High Water” sign still up, despite the level being well below normal.
I noticed the Animal Control vehicles driving around the park and finally meeting up in front of the pond.
I was hooked, curious about what was going on. I watched as one guy grabbed a net and headed out to the center of the pond with a police officer. The officer remained on solid ground,
while the animal control guy waded out into the muck and water, coming real close to slipping and falling a couple of times.
He reached out and scooped up a dead duck,
headed back to solid ground,
met up with the police officer,
and headed back to the vehicles.
What the deal with the dead duck was, I have no idea. Why it took 3 Animal Control vehicles and one Police Officer, I don’t know. I was freezing by this time, so I just headed home.
And saw this idiot driving up 1300 East on the way.
Seriously, dude. You could have spent the extra 60 seconds and cleaned off your back window, it wouldn’t have killed you.
And I still have tomorrow off from school. Nice day.
