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Wagner Cafe…

Net Position $162.3M (Page 20) | Facilities & Services | South Dakota Board of Regents Policy Manual

…A student-run dining space located on the fourth floor (Room 429) of Wagner Hall; formerly the Home Economics and Nursing Building that connects to the Bailey Rotunda.  The pop-up café is operated by hospitality students that serves four-course meals (sandwiches, soups, salads, desserts) in a home kitchen atmosphere integrated with the building’s offices, classrooms, and labs.

Leaner Campus, Stronger Future

 

Limits of Inspection Authority

“The Dressmaking Factory” 1914 | Charles Ginnar
@Tate

Building inspection authority refers to the governmental power granted to building officials and inspectors to enforce building codes, conduct site visits, review plans, issue permits, and ensure construction complies with safety, structural, zoning, and environmental standards.

Its significance lies primarily in protecting public safety by identifying hazards, preventing structural failures, fire risks, and health threats from substandard work. This authority mandates minimum quality levels, reducing risks of collapses, injuries, or fatalities—lessons reinforced by historical disasters.

It promotes accountability among designers, builders, and owners, ensuring durability, energy efficiency, and accessibility while supporting sustainable urban development. By halting non-compliant projects or requiring fixes, inspectors safeguard communities, preserve property values, and minimize long-term costs from repairs or liabilities.

Ultimately, this regulatory framework upholds trust in the built environment, balancing innovation with life-protecting oversight for residents, workers, and the public.

Here are the primary **ANSI-accredited standards developers that develop and publish model building codes, related consensus standards for construction safety, inspection, structural integrity, energy efficiency, plumbing, fire safety, and similar areas incorporated into or referenced into public law:

– **International Code Council (ICC)** — Develops the International Building Code (IBC), International Residential Code (IRC), International Fire Code (IFC), and other model codes widely adopted for building inspection and enforcement, plus ANSI-approved standards.
Link: https://www.iccsafe.org

– **National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)** — Publishes NFPA 1 (Fire Code), NFPA 101 (Life Safety Code), NFPA 5000 (Building Construction and Safety Code), and numerous fire safety/inspection standards referenced in building codes.
Link: https://www.nfpa.org

– **International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO)** — Develops the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC) and Uniform Mechanical Code (UMC), key for plumbing/mechanical inspections.
Link: https://www.iapmo.org

– **ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers)** — Develops ANSI/ASHRAE standards like 90.1 (Energy Standard for Buildings) and others for HVAC, energy, and indoor air quality, often referenced in codes.
Link: https://www.ashrae.org

– **ASTM International** — Produces thousands of material, testing, and performance standards (e.g., for construction materials and inspection methods) referenced in building codes.
Link: https://www.astm.org

– **American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)** — Develops ASCE 7 (Minimum Design Loads), ASCE 24 (Flood Resistant Design), and structural/inspection-related standards.
Link: https://www.asce.org

Building inspection authority, while essential for safety, can be abused through corruption, such as inspectors accepting bribes to approve substandard work, overlook violations, expedite permits, or ignore stop-work orders. Examples include cases in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu, where inspectors took cash, gifts, or favors to falsify approvals or fast-track processes, enabling unsafe or non-compliant construction.This abuse distorts fair competition, favors corrupt developers or connected parties, and erodes public trust in regulatory systems.

More critically, it limits economic development by inflating costs (e.g., bribes add 10-30% to projects), causing delays from bureaucratic extortion or backlogs exploited for payoffs, deterring legitimate investment, and misallocating resources toward sub-optimal or risky builds.Corruption in permitting and inspections discourages foreign and domestic developers, slows urban growth, reduces infrastructure quality, and hampers long-term competitiveness. In booming markets, it exacerbates inefficiencies, diverts funds from productive uses, and ultimately stifles job creation and sustainable expansion.

 

Cafe Crawl

Statement of Net Position 2024: $685,683 (000)  | Leadership Organization  |  Master Plan



Tom Hanks Center for Motion Pictures

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Crespelle

Castagne e cucina: ricette a base di castagne conservate



Un mondo fatto bene

Dolce Vita

Standards West Virginia | 2024 Net Position $2.586B (Page 26)  | Master Plans

At the Library

West Virginia University is integrated with the city of Morgantown in a way that shares some strong similarities with many European universities, though not identically in every aspect.

Many classic European universities (e.g., in cities like Oxford, Cambridge, Bologna, Paris/Sorbonne, Heidelberg, or Utrecht) are deeply embedded in their urban fabric. Buildings are often scattered throughout the historic city center, with lecture halls, libraries, and administrative spaces intermixed among shops, residences, cafes, and public streets rather than being confined to a walled-off or peripheral “campus.”

In Morgantown the university and city feel like one continuous, walkable entity — the institution essentially helped shape or co-evolved with the town over centuries, creating a seamless “town-gown” blend where university life spills directly into city life and vice versa.

West Virginia University Drinking Water Sanitation Program

Overall, Morgantown is widely regarded as a quintessential American college town with very strong university-city integration — especially around the Downtown Campus — and it mirrors the European pattern more closely than many sprawling, isolated U.S. flagship campuses (e.g., those in big suburban or rural settings like Purdue, Ohio State, or Texas A&M). The relationship is symbiotic and visible in daily life, with the university embedded in the city's identity and physical layout.


 

 


 

 

Flagship public universities likely to cut more humanities, staff — especially in rural states

Cinnamon Banana Pancakes

NDSU Net Position 2024: $570 M | Standards North Dakota | Capital Renewal Master Plan

CINNAMON BANANA PANCAKES

Old Main, North Dakota Agricultural College | Milton Earl Beebe, Architect

🐦 Homophily Michigan 🐦


Eggs Benedict & Cowboy Coffee

Standards Wyoming | Kitchen Standards

Weekly Construction Report: January 9-15

“A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste” — Pierre Bourdieu, Harvard University Press 1984

Cowboy Coffee | Appetite for Knowledge

Vicki Hayman, University of Wyoming Extension Nutrition Educator, explains how to put together an English muffin, poached egg, Canadian bacon, and a homemade hollandaise sauce named after Lemuel Benedict, a Wall Street banker who, in 1894, ordered a hangover remedy at the Waldorf Hotel in New York. He requested buttered toast, poached eggs, crisp bacon, and hollandaise sauce.

The hotel’s maître d’hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, was impressed and adapted the dish for the menu, swapping bacon for ham and toast for an English muffin, naming it Eggs Benedict in his honor. Another claim links it to Commodore E.C. Benedict, but the Lemuel story is more widely accepted. The dish’s luxurious combination of poached eggs, ham, English muffin, and hollandaise sauce cemented its fame as a breakfast classic.

 

The Coffee Lab


Water | Energy | Electricity | Light | Food Safety | Coffee

Standards Illinois | Net Position 2024: $377.2M | Master Land Use Plan

Homophily Wyoming

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