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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 14, 2023 13:11:08 GMT -5
The oldest of the Easy St. dorms are 65+ years old. These were economically built. It appears there may be asbestos in the walls. (The only reason I can think of why they are hesitant to sell bricks.) Someone who is adept at perusing the "Crusader" archives may find an old construction photo or two. I suspect the basic construction is steel and cement. The steel may have been fireproofed with asbestos.
If so, there is no salvaging any of the building.
And there is no point, as the saying goes, to spend money 'putting lipstick on a pig'. The plumbing, heating, electrical needs to be completely replaced. They have spent money in recent years on new roofs and replacing windows, but I don't believe that all four of the earliest Easy St. dorms have had this done. I believe this recent spending could not be deferred.
I expect the reconstructed dorms to have A/C, and to be much more energy efficient.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 13, 2023 20:56:32 GMT -5
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 13, 2023 12:44:40 GMT -5
The biggest con is that when there is a large crowd, 90 percent supporting Holy Cross, the seating capacity of the north stands is probably no more than 5,000, and many will be squeezed either to poor seats, or to the south stands. What were 30 yard line seats in the south stands will become 10 yard line or end zone seats in the north stands, and the students and others, who are not season ticket-holders, are relegated to the south stands.
Add another camera position to the northeast corner. That will be a good position to pan the crowd and catch RC working the refs.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 13, 2023 12:29:10 GMT -5
Back in play with no apparent change in view. I was told last time -- after vociferously and bitterly complaining, replete with foot-stomping -- that the webcams are actually and regularly used by public safety and the facilities department, and not just the sidewalk superintendents. These offices would sometimes change the camera's view, and, when done, would neglect to change the view back to the original setting. IT has now modified the cam software so that five minutes after a cam view was altered, the software will return the camera to the default view.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 13, 2023 8:30:57 GMT -5
The parking lots between the PPAC and Figge. Some/many of the newer spaces (fresh asphalt) are reserved for the PPAC staff/faculty/performing artists/etc, Figge has 156 beds, so a new hall would probably need 180-200 beds to serve as swing space fduring reconstruction of an Easy St. dorm
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 13, 2023 8:18:15 GMT -5
The boundaries of a flood plain are based on actual flooding events. I am having trouble embedding the actual images, but this link to the National Archives has six photographs of the 1955 flooding in Worcester. nara.getarchive.net/search?q=%23worcester%20%23floodOne of the photographs is of Webster Square. The area around Webster Square drains into the Middle River, which flows by Fitton Field. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the T&G: Cambridge St. at McKeon Road. This is the Middle River flowing up through the sewer manholes. No description needed. Honest question.... If this picture outlines the flood plain how on earth was a gas station allowed to be built on Southbridge Street next to the Rotman's parking lot? Not only has it been there awhile but it was just completely rebuilt this summer. There is no prohibition against locating a gas station in a flood plain. Typically though, there would be prohibitions against open storage of hazardous or toxic substances including petroleum products. Where there is not a prohibition, and a property owner stores a hazardous substance in a flood plain, the cost of ameliorating or mitigating the cost of a spill into the waterway can be enormous. See: www.utilitydive.com/news/duke-agrees-to-largest-coal-ash-clean-up-in-us-after-years-of-fighting-with/569699/goo.gl/maps/TrtDp1LH4jdvZ5zh8^^^ The old mill buildings west of College Square. The cement wall was built as part of the Interstate. There was probably a gravel path along the bank of the Middle River, which was removed when the wall was built. Either as a result of the 1955 flood or the channeling of the Middle River, windows are doors on the ground floor were sealed.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 20:42:49 GMT -5
Hesitant as I am to get into a discussion of hydrodynamics, hydraulics, etc., I'll leave out the Reynolds numbers because I told Newfie no quiz before discussion of Reynolds numbers. Anyway, the flood photos are from 1955. In 1957, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the Worcester Diversion Project. www.nae.usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Flood-Risk-Management/Massachusetts/Worcester/which, as pictured in the link above, created a big ditch from west of Webster Square to Auburn to divert high, storm-generated streamflows from the Middle River. About 10 years later, the Commonwealth, in building the Interstate through College Square, constructed a culvert that runs from Southbridge St. to McKeon Rd. conveying the flow of the Middle River to the Blackstone. The culvert channels the flow of he Middle River into a confined space. This has likely affected the hydraulics of the Middle River. An analogy of what might occur is when ice floes pile up against bridge abutments, impeding the flow of the river, and causing the river to rise and flood upstream of the jam. In the case of the Middle River, the rise would occur at the Southbridge St. bridge and College Square. goo.gl/maps/iAjLpiYttTui8Y977
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 15:37:08 GMT -5
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 15:23:52 GMT -5
97 College, 99 College, and 97 Kendig. House marked 2 is on City View and owned by HC, as well as houses to its right on City View.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 15:14:15 GMT -5
Clay St.HC bought 15 Clay. A real estate developer/contractor in Boston owns 11, 9, 7 Clay. 1, 3, and 5 Clay An individual living in Millbury owns 1, 3, and 5 Clay St., under a living revocable trust. HC owns most of the properties to the right of the blue line. These are on College St. between Clay and Boyden. HC bought the small house at 33 Boyden several years ago. The yellow lines indicate the property line.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 14:27:29 GMT -5
Thanks Phreek for your insights. What is the speculation regarding how these properties will be developed? Following up on Sader1970’s comments from the meeting, the Easy Street Dorms required replacement, and will not be renovated. I am looking forward to seeing the architectural rendering and shovels in the ground. ^^^119 Kendig, sold in January. Abuts college property on City View. (Part of the settled lawsuit) ^^^^97 -99 Kendig, sold in January, abuts college property on City View. (Lawsuit) ^^^28 Boyden Sold in January, across the street from Clay St. (Lawsuit) ^^^15 Clay St. sold in January. Clay St is of great interest to HC (lawsuit) Map(s) to come on why 15 Clay is of such interest to HC. ^^^99 College. (at corner of Kendig.) Sold to HC last fall. ^^^^97 College. Sold to HC last fall. College told Worcester Business Journal that 97 and 99 College are for faculty. ---------------------- Re; the Easy St. dorms. Perhaps by replacement, the College means to gut these, taking them down to the steel and concrete slabs.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 12:05:53 GMT -5
Oh, one last thing (hopefully), one of the "more mature" alums suggested that Michele's information was great for the HCAA BOD to hear but it would be worth sharing with all alums. Michele said that while she shares most of this with the parents of the current students and had thought about also sharing with alums and "too bad this wasn't recorded," she was told that indeed her presentation was recorded as a number of HCAA and former HCAA presidents (like Crucis) were on via Zoom. She then said she would work with staff to try to combine and edit into one video what she shared with us and the students' parents. So, something for all to look forward to but not sure how long this will take. Again, I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to get ahead of president Rougeau. I bet she didn't discuss the $2.5 million of land and houses HC bought in the last four months. 97 College St and 99 College St. for $1,250,000 million 97 Kendig, 119 Kendig, 28 Boyden, 16 Clay St for $1.2 million a month ago. ^^^ These last four were the subject of a lawsuit basically for breach. The plaintiff was Madison Kendig Holdings who is building the Jesuit Residence v. HIGCO, a real estate holding company who owns numerous properties in Worcester. The case was settled in December, with prejudice, each side bearing their own costs. The first week of January, HC buys these four properties. Without Fr. K's great assistance in the past, i.e., reading real estate transfers in the T&G and posting about such on Crossports, I have devoted much of this morning reading court dockets,. I will post photos later.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 10:13:02 GMT -5
Most recently, Rougeau, in describing the reconstruction of the Easy St. dorms, said the freshmen and sophomore dorms would become more like the residences for juniors/seniors. Which I took to mean is suites. Suites reduce bed density. There are two ways to achieve that: either add another floor or two to each of the Easy St. dorms,, or build additional dorm(s).
The four oldest Easy St. dorms each have between 180-200 beds.
It is not clear from what Murray said, how moving students from the Edge to campus alleviates the return of the triples because of the unexpected yield from the class of 2026.
And then there is Brooks (400 beds) and Wheeler (270 beds.) I think Loyola stays as is, given the private bathrooms.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 12, 2023 9:48:08 GMT -5
Flood Plain as that is based on facts, history, and law The other topic might be close but we never know what happens in this crazy world of college sports today In case of deluge, roll your pants up and carry on. I don't want two Southern schools joining the PL so that subject is ridiculous to me. Regarding the flood plain, I always chuckle when that term is raised because I have been attending games at Fitton since the mid sixties and never remember the gridiron being flooded (grass torn up and muddy, yes). How often do they test to see if an area still qualifies as a flood plain? The Great Salt Lake is evaporating so flood plains near it must be losing their designation. The boundaries of a flood plain are based on actual flooding events. I am having trouble embedding the actual images, but this link to the National Archives has six photographs of the 1955 flooding in Worcester. nara.getarchive.net/search?q=%23worcester%20%23floodOne of the photographs is of Webster Square. The area around Webster Square drains into the Middle River, which flows by Fitton Field. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the T&G: Cambridge St. at McKeon Road. This is the Middle River flowing up through the sewer manholes. No description needed.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 10, 2023 8:33:53 GMT -5
Rumor has it that Delaware will leave the CAA in the near future and follow James Madison into the FBS. (Some support for that rumor is the recent "no comment" response of UD's president to a question about the rumor posed by a big donor in a private meeting, as conveyed to me by an attendee at that meeting.) A friend of mine is a W&M alum and a big supporter of Tribe football. He tells me that folks in Williamsburg are not happy with the departure of JMU and possibly UD and less than impressed with recent additions to the conference. If I were the PL, I'd be paying close attention. There may be an opportunity at some point to persuade one or more CAA schools (think W&M, Richmond, and/or Villanova) to join the PL in football. A long shot perhaps, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I also heard that Delaware has its sights set on FBS football. Again, I see the FBS as an enterprise that will continually expand for the foreseeable future, akin to college basketball. But who knows? It's also entirely possible that the "Super Leagues" break off from the FBS, leaving 3 tiers of D1 football. That said, I just don't see why a CAA team would bolt for the Patriot League. Doesn't the CAA allow redshirts? I could be wrong on that, but it's a stronger conference with better rules for developing a football program. The PL needs to "get with the times" if it wants to attract new commodities. EDIT: The main article is paywalled, but here's a link to a post regarding Delaware's FBS plans: www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/y3ggog/delaware_potentially_preparing_to_move_up_to_fbs/There are already three tiers of Div I football, and this is officially recognized by the NCAA. The three are FBS autonomy schools; FBS non-autonomy; and FCS. There is little financial advantage to a school that jumps from FCS to FBS non-autonomy. And I am unaware of any FCS school that has jumped to FBS autonomy since the tiers were created. A decade or so ago, I remember reading the NCAA revenue and expense reports of several MAC schools and they were not carrying the full allotment of football scollies on their rosters. Instead of the 85 allowed, the number of scollie players were in the 70s.
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NIL
Feb 10, 2023 8:15:56 GMT -5
efg72 likes this
Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 10, 2023 8:15:56 GMT -5
With a few well-heeled alums, the NIL could be the way HC could turn around the basketball program very quickly Historically and given its supposed prominence, the men's basketball program was and remains an underachiever when it comes to $$$ amounts contributed to the CAF.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 9, 2023 17:10:34 GMT -5
Here is the comparison:
ESPN+ 24 million subscribers $9.99 a month
FloSports .5 million subscribers $29.99 a month
ESPN+ money has to be shared across the vast network they have from the cricket matches in the Caribbean to the Liberty club hockey game. That is the biggest difference. FloSports total annual revenue is reported as $16 million.** For ESPN+, using 4th quarter 2022 values reported yesterday, 24.9 million subscribers x $5.53 monthly revenue per subscriber x 12 months = $1,656 million annual revenue (extrapolating 4Q values to a full year). ----------------- It is very hard to find accurate revenue values for FloSports. According to SimilarWeb, total visits in Dec 2022, were 270,000.. That would include those watching AHL. However, there are not 500,000 subscribers, given the total n umber of visits in December. More likely there are closer to 50,000 subscribers than 500,000. 500,000 subscribers x $30 monthly x 12 = $180 million.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 9, 2023 9:09:37 GMT -5
The roof is in place on the new Jesuit residence, and it appears that window installation has begun on the second of the two new student residences on City View.
Rougeau was indirectly asked about construction progress in a recent webinar, and he intimated that construction was ahead of schedule thanks to the mild winter with little snow (by Worcester standards).
It appears that both the new residence halls and Ciampi will be ready for students by fall. A total of 200-220 new beds. --------------- The trench was dug to a point between the two new halls, and after further thought, the conduit piping may be for an electrical line. The main 12.5 kV line for the college runs from the Hart to the west of Wheeler,
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 7, 2023 9:10:20 GMT -5
I love it, Thanks, PP. There's not going to be a quiz, is there? No quiz until there is a discussion of Reynolds numbers.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 5, 2023 16:00:25 GMT -5
The two teams faced off on Feb. 5, 2022. Providence, who was ranked #14 at the time, took the meeting 16-9.
Providence returns 36 players, including 12 seniors and two graduate students.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 4, 2023 12:42:28 GMT -5
I am wondering if for the purpose of whatever the PL cap now is, that an adjustment upward was introduced to allow for so many of these COVID fifth year seniors being rostered. And that the fifth years are counted as matriculating for only half an academic year. That is, if there are 12 fifth years on the roster in the fall, they only count as six.
This upward ratchet would not benefit Bucknell, but I believe all the other PL rosters had fifth year COVID seniors last season.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 4, 2023 10:29:52 GMT -5
Childhood lesson: don't always raise your hand in class.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 4, 2023 10:20:49 GMT -5
The 6 AM observation from Mt. Washington today. (I think some of the instruments may be frozen.) If UNH had a men's lacrosse team, I'm certain they'd be out there playing, and there'd be a photographer out there as well. No conditions too extreme for the Wildcats. WCI is Wind Chill Index value
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 4, 2023 10:07:17 GMT -5
PP, when you use "short duration" and "long return" what kind of times frames are we talking about? These are contemporary* trajectories for conjunction and opposition class missions. The red loop in the left example represents return(s) to earth by way of a Venus flyby. [* Early 21st Century calculations.] Venus flybys are/were a mission option, because of the gravity assist. Contemporary table showing tradeoffs between conjunction class (950 days) and opposition class missions (650 days). 'My' missions used a NERVA rocket engine, and the opposition class mission duration was 500-600 days. The conjunction class mission duration was similar to contemporary durations, a variable being the length of stay in Mars orbit and on the Martian surface. Back then, there was an extended period of orbiting Mars while automated landers took samples and returned these to the crew module to determine whether there were life forms present on the surface. Subsequent decades of exploration have pretty much answered that question. The NERVA engine, to my eye, it has a Buck Rogers Art Deco quality about it. NERVA was a nuclear reactor engine that burned hydrogen fuel. Hydrogen is very light, so a rocket's tank can carry large quantities with a low weight penalty. Hydrogen is commonly used in chemical rocket engines, e.g., hydrogen and oxygen were burned to power the upper stages of the Saturn V rocket. In the earth's atmosphere, hydrogen will not burn by itself. From Wiki en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVANixon cancelled NERVA in 1973.
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Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Feb 3, 2023 17:35:53 GMT -5
Another digression that might set Phreek off since he was a long-time government employee. .............. So, I'm all for strategic planning. In fact, it's critical. Project Management - not so much. Phreek can keep me honest here but believe PM was the brainchild of NASA. [Your company results with PM may vary] NASA did not start from scratch. For example, PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) was introduced by the Navy and the building of nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the 1950s, and NASA adopted it. I just looked at my old and still legible 300+ page manual for contract cost ,management, developed by a management consulting firm, and all the examples in it are private sector industry. There were almost no fixed price contracts, nearly all were some flavor of cost plus. The ;private sector is happy to be awarded a cost plus contract, but private sector companies awarding such contracts would be atypical, as they don't own the printing press. Back in the day, the way that NASA managed was light-years ahead of the rest of the Federal government, except for the R&D programs in DOD and the nuclear weapons programs. Before there was Lotus123, i had spreadsheets running on a computer in Alabama that I accessed from my terminal in Washington. (I was costing manned missions to Mars this way. I couldn't classify the spreadsheets, and very, very few people were supposed to know what the numbers were for, so I titled the spreadsheets after bands. CCR was Credence Clearwater Revival (really for Bad Moon Rising), 3DN was Three Dog Night. There were several others that I can't remember. But CCR was the preferred mission, and there was CCR-1 and CCR-2, as there are two types of missions if you fly to Mars: Opposition Class and Conjunction Class. The basic difference between the two is either a long outbound trip and a short duration return trip to Earth, or a short outbound and a long return.
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