Shop Talk: News from the U. of Illinois, the U. of Missouri, and the U. of Maine

Illinois Hillel draws crowds: The just-opened Margie K. and Louis N. Cohen Center for Jewish Life, on the University of Illinois’s flagship campus (right), is so popular that it is already extending its hours, reports The News-Gazette, in Champaign, Ill. The $6-million, 18,000-square-foot building was designed by Amstadter Architects, of Chicago. It has two large, multipurpose rooms, a lounge with a 19-foot-high ceiling, a library, a second-floor patio, and separate kitchens for meat and dairy items. It replaces a 1951 building by a well-known Modernist, Max Abramovitz, that preservationists unsuccessfully tried to have designated a historic landmark. The cornerstone of the earlier building was installed in the new one.

HOK wins St. Louis project: The University of Missouri’s Board of Curators has picked Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum to oversee a project that will renovate and expand the five-building Benton-Stadler science complex on the St. Louis campus. According to The Current, the student newspaper, the project will begin with construction of a building to accommodate those forced out of other structures during renovations. The three-phase project is scheduled to end in 2014.

Geothermal pays off in Maine: Two buildings at the University of Maine at Farmington have received LEED certification, the university has announced. The new Education Center, which relies on 40 geothermal wells for heating and cooling, earned a silver ranking. And a residence hall earned base-level certification.

The Education Center at the U. of Maine at Farmington (Chronicle photograph by Lawrence Biemiller)