As campus develops, one piece needs to be complete before construction on another can begin.
With the beginning of construction on Hunt Softball Field at the end of this month, there are now seven projects underway or scheduled to begin in the next several months. Most of these projects are scheduled for completion by the end of the calendar year or by early 2013. Tari Maynor, a project manager for Elon’s planning, design and construction management department, described the renovation and construction process for buildings as similar to a puzzle.
“It’s always like one of those Chinese puzzles where you have to move everybody around for the pieces to fit,” Maynor said. “You have to finish one renovation and move people in and move someone else out so you can renovate (their space) and then move them in there. We’re very busy. We’re keeping the moving crew busy also.”
While construction seems to occupy much of the campus, some projects have yet to begin.
Upcoming projects
Hunt Softball Park, which will be located adjacent to Walter C. Latham Park in the North Area Athletic Complex, got construction bids in this week for the bleachers, plaza, restrooms and press box. Construction is scheduled to begin by the end of this month, weather permitting, Maynor said. The field will be ready for next year’s season at the beginning of January.
The Elon School of Law in Greensboro is also scheduled to start building a career services area across the street from the main building, which is scheduled for completion in August. The student organizations such as the Student Bar Association at the School of Law will also be moving into a new space formerly occupied by a smoothie shop in the near future, Maynor said.
There will also be construction on Duke building this summer to update the building and move the Carpenter Lab and computer science offices on the building’s third floor to the first floor in the space formerly occupied by Career Services. The second and third floors will be for mathematics and statistics, and two classrooms and two labs will be renovated. This construction will start after graduation and will be finished by August 1, according to Maynor.
While the university continues to plan for facility expansions, students are no strangers to an evolving university.
Current projects
The Station at Mill Point is the final item on the construction docket, and it is the only one that has created any kind of construction-related stir in the community, according to Maynor and Jody Booth, who is also a project manager for Elon’s planning, design and construction management department. Elon Town Manager Mike Dula said residents living near the Station have questions about traffic patterns, noise ordinances and who will be living there.
“I think any time you have a construction site, particularly if it’s adjacent to a residential area, then there’s inconveniences and there’s noise, there’s mud in the street, things like that,” Dula said. “As the construction’s going on, we try to make sure the building contractor is aware of that and doesn’t do that, hopefully. And so we try to make the impact on the surrounding neighborhood as little as possible as construction is going on, and we try to have development standards such that it won’t make a great amount of impact when the construction’s over.”
Maynor said the contractors are aware that there have been a few complaints about mud in the street, but the contractors and construction staff are working hard to ensure they don’t disturb nearby residents.
“I think when we were working in Moseley with the Student Professional Development Center, which was a renovation that we finished in December, we worked to make sure that we weren’t in the hallways to block the area,” Maynor said. “We limited the amount of parking spaces that the contractor had at the site to six, so he sometimes had to park further away and walk the rest of the way. We do things like that to stay out of people’s way and not impact their business.”
The buildings at the Station are being painted inside and outside in the coming weeks. Cabinets are being installed, the swimming pool is being tiled and next week both Ballpark Avenue and Williamson Avenue will be widened. The project will be complete by August 1 and ready to house students this fall, according to Booth.
The move of the Physician’s Assistant and Physical Therapy department from the McMichael building to the Francis Center has left a hole in the lower level of McMichael, according to Maynor. This space is currently undergoing renovations that should be complete by graduation, according to Maynor, to give the space a facelift. The construction is scheduled to be finished by graduation so that people can be moved back in by the summer, Maynor said.
Moseley Center’s Global Dining Hall is in the process of having its walls finished and its roof shingled. The outside walls of the building will be finished around July, and construction will be finished Dec. 4, 2012, according to Booth.
The foundation is currently being poured for the Numen Lumen Pavilion in East area, and Booth said while it looks like construction is going slowly in these beginning stages, there is a lot of background work going on, like ordering materials. The new Multi-faith Center is scheduled for completion on Jan. 13, 2013.