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and in my state too..hahahahahah..eat your heart out other state folk ;D ;)
8)
(http://i45.servimg.com/u/f45/13/55/53/83/s-mill10.jpg)
Millennium Falcon Look-Alike High School Delights 'Star Wars' Fans (PHOTO)
The Huffington Post | By Laura Hibbard Posted: 04/16/2012 1:35 pm Updated: 04/16/2012 1:35 pm
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away it was known as the 'fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy,' but for Allentown, Pa., the Millennium Falcon takes a different form -- the layout of Parkland High School.
We're not kidding, the school's campus looks exactly like Han Solo's spaceship in 'Star Wars'.
While The Soup TV reports officials at the high school claim they didn't consciously plan the campus that way, we're pretty sure they're just lying low to "avoid any imperial entanglements."
The consensus on Reddit, where the photo was originally posted by user biggins339, seems to be the same conclusion.
"Somewhere out there, there's a civil engineer laughing his a-- off," user splatt9990 wrote.
May the force be with them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/16/millennium-falcon-look-alike-_n_1428749.html
:o
opps..too late to modify the post ..so adding this
place wasn't cheap and with that much land..must be a rich district
Parkland High School Allentown, Pennsylvania
FIRM..ATS&R Planners/Architects/Engineers
CLIENT...Indian Prairie Public Schools
AREA..460,000 sq.ft.
TOTAL COST........$64,095,000.00
COMPLETION DATE 8/1999
Parkland High School, set atop a rolling 128-acre campus, was designed to create exciting learning opportunities for the 21st century. This facility expresses the historic nature of the Lehigh Valley and the tradition of high-quality education in the district.
Because the site is on a steep hillside, the building is set in the hill.
http://schooldesigns.com/Project-Details.aspx?Project_ID=902
...
Parkland High School looks like 'Star Wars' ship?
Bloggers say aerial photo of school resembles the Millennium Falcon. Architect insists it's coincidence.
By Michael Duck and Marion Callahan, Of The Morning Call
5:17 p.m. EDT, April 16, 2012
Parkland High School: Institution of learning for more than 3,200 students, or tribute to a blazing-fast starship co-piloted by a Wookiee?
A Google Maps satellite photograph of the high school that seems to resemble Han Solo's Millennium Falcon from the "Star Wars" movies went viral over the weekend, generating a flurry of blog posts and links from Twitter and Facebook users across the nation and even from other countries.
"Officials at Parkland High School ... deny that this is anything more than a coincidence but their piddling attempts at Jedi mind tricks will not work on us," quipped writer Shannon Lucas in a post Thursday evening on the blog for the E! television show The Soup. Lucas indicated the image had gone viral last year and was starting to make the rounds again.
Then, faster than Luke Skywalker could bullseye a womp rat, the aerial view of the school grounds in South Whitehall Township exploded onto social media.
A blog post for the British publication Metro said the image was trending worldwide on Twitter by Monday morning, and the school ended up on the front page of popular news aggregators such as BuzzFeed.
Despite the attention from so many bloggers, Parkland officials remain insistent that this is not the starship they're looking for.
"There is no connection," said Nicole McGalla, spokeswoman for the district.
In fact, McGalla said, the 13-year-old school is an exact replica of a Minnesota high school, designed by Minneapolis-based architect firm ATS&R.
"We don't design buildings based on what they would look like from space," said Dean Beeninga, one of ATS&R's lead architects. And even if they did, he said, "it would be pretty hard to go in and convince people a spaceship is the right start" for a school design.
The campus' unusual curves were intended to allow for more windows and natural light in classrooms, in addition to keeping the whole school compact and efficient, Beeninga said.
"I would think that the 'Star Wars' creators wanted to create something that looked very organized and efficient, too," said Beeninga, who has seven kids and admits to being a "Star Wars" fan. "Like a spaceship, it's very simple, very organized. The Millennium Falcon must be a good educational model."
His firm has designed 15 other schools that have also been likened to spaceships, including Central Bucks South in Bucks County. "Maybe that is where educational architecture is going," he said.
Back in the Lehigh Valley, local bloggers and former Parkland padawans have been chiming in with their own comments, quips and blog posts about the school's design. Blogger Christopher Cocca wrote that, as president of Parkland's class of 1998, he never attended classes in the now-famous building but was there at its groundbreaking in 1997.
"You should also know that I lobbied hard that we change the school's mascot to Jedi, but I had to settle for renaming the track the Kessel Run," he wrote.
He didn't say whether he was able to run it in less than 12 parsecs.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/parkland/mc-parkland-millennium-falcon-20120416,0,3141168.story