What's is that thing on Skinker and Forest Park Parkway?

Okay, every day I walk to and from the Skinker Metrolink station and I have been watching the construction of the Preston M. Green Hall. Now, however, they are building something in front of the building by the street corner and it looks like quite a substantial structure, more than the smaller "Washington University in St. Louis" sign that used to be there but closer to the corner. I grabbed the latest image from the Claycorp webcam and cropped out the strange structure they are building there. I also decided to troll the Internet to find any architectural drawings of what they plan for the street corner and found this lovely picture here:

It appears that the corner will be a large plot of concrete with some greenery behind it! Was that really the best plan they could devise? Where they are building the large granite covered structure looks like a bunch of greenery in the mocked up photo. Is that going to be a large planter of sorts with "Washington University" written on it? They have been laying out some large expanses of concrete there on the corner in the last couple days which is not what I had been expecting until I saw the mock up. Why do they need so much concreted space there?

The other thing I realized is that once Green Hall is completed, the Metrolink to building "outdoor sprint path" is not reduced as much as you would think by having a new building added onto the end of Brauer Hall. Here I have grabbed an image of the corner from Google Maps and added in green my current bad weather "sprint path" from the Brauer Hall loading dock, and the shortened "sprint path" in blue that will be necessary from Green Hall when it is completed in a few months:

I think the addition of Green Hall may reduce the outdoor walking distance by maybe 40%, but I do not think it will reduce it by half. The pathway from Green Hall archway to the corner sidewalk is a good 150 to 200 feet and there is no easy way to cut the corner to the Metrolink entrance with the way everything has been made. I like to think it would have been cool if they had built the basement of Green Hall so it would have a tunnel that leads right to the Metrolink station, but that might be a security problem:

The new plan also does not allow you to "cut the corner" like we could in the past when the old sign was there and you could walk the sidewalk behind it and save quite a few steps:

I will be anxious to see the construction completed to see what the corner is like with everything done. This morning there was even a large concrete truck sitting there blocking the sidewalk so we had to walk out in the street! Luckily nobody was hit by a car!!