State of the Art Multi-Media Center

My husband is an RPI graduate (Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute [college] for those of you who are not local and might not know). The alumni department conducts field trips regularly throughout the year, and any alumni (alumnus??) is welcome to participate. This morning we gathered together at the RPI campus' newest Multi-Media center for a tour.

While we were waiting for the tour to begin, I was looking around at the people there and I suddenly realized that I was in the company of about 30 engineers. Oh. My. Gosh!! I will say no more on that subject.

This concert hall, below, seats 1200 people in comfortable pure leather seats, the frames of which are made of maple wood. Wanna take a guess as to how much each seat cost??? Never mind, I'll just tell ya.....$1,000/per seat. hmmmm

And of course, who would want to attend a concert unless they had their own, individual air flow sensor under their seat, along with the 1,199 others who were also attending the concert?

This is just one of the 4 venues in this new building.

One of the other spaces is an auditorium that seats 400--same seats and air-flow systems, but with a Broadway sized stage for mega-productions.

The next photo shows the outside of the facility, but still within the larger building.

Another view.

So! What would a structure like this cost? Only a mere $200 million. No folks, I did not make a typo on the zeros. Really two hundred million. Oh, but not to worry. They received an endowment of $340 million before they began construction. Three. Hundred. Forty million!! What does that mean? My brain can't even wrap itself around what those numbers mean. Is there really such a number?

Anyway, one redeeming thing about all this is that many of the performances cost only a paltry sum to attend--like $5 for the students. Yeah, and that's not a typo either. Five dollars. Pretty good if you ask me. The tour leader said that the average for a performance, depending of the type of performance is $15.

The next two images are of other buildings on the campus. I didn't get to walk around much of the campus, but what I saw was beautiful. I can imagine the changes that have taken place since many of the tour attendees graduated. One of the men graduated the same year I was born. It must seem like a whole different campus to him.

By the way, if you might be interested in attending any of the performances at this new arts center, go to www.empac.rpi.edu

There are no performances during the summer, but there will be many scheduled for the fall, so bookmark the site and check back regularly.