Your Campus, New & Improved

Old Henderson and Binnion halls were well rooted this spring, sitting amid new landscaping that includes hundreds of yaupon shrubs and dozens of young red and live oaks.

Touch base with the home plate the next time you’re in Commerce. Take State Loop 178, or Culver Street, west to Hubbell Drive and turn right. The Cain Sports Complex, fashioned in a wagon wheel design, includes a varsity softball field, varsity baseball field, two intramural softball/flag football fields, restrooms and a concession stand. It was dedicated March 31, the opening day of baseball season.

The springtime spruce-up goes far a-field, with student volunteers planting 10 Liberty Elms at the Cain Sports Complex. The trees were purchased from the Girl Scouts with funds from the Charles and Jean Draper Endowment.

Those distinctive—or disfiguring, depending on your bent—blue panels have been removed from the Wathena Temple Building. When complete, the Temple Building will host art students, who then will get to say goodbye to the concrete blocks of the Creative Arts Village. The CAV will close and eventually be razed.

The brand-new $12 million Instructional Student Recreation Facility will open this summer. View the construction site from a live “Webcam” feed at www.tamu-commerce.edu/NewRecCenter/.

The rec center includes an outdoor swimming pool that President Keith McFarland calls “unlike anything in the U.S.” The water venue includes a heated leisure pool with a beach-type entry, fountains, water tunnel, current channel, bubble jet benches, and three lap lanes. Pictured above is just one part of the pool: a two-tier hot tub with waterfall.

Old Mayo Hall (pictured here in its winter finery) isn’t yet getting the full facelift that President McFarland says he wants it to eventually have, but the University is spending $1.8 million to preserve it for eventual renovation. As part of that maintenance, Mayo’s masonry will get a gentle scouring and its wood windows will be restored. It’s all happening as a committee is making a final review of the University’s application to have the namesake of founder William L. Mayo included on the National Register of Historic Places. A decision on that is expected next month.

The demolition of the IT arm of the Ag Building has exposed an original outer door, which now exits onto a field of green grass between it and the Wathena Temple Building.