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Columns::November 4, 2002
New connections: Computer network lab looks to next generation
McGill Lecturer discusses challenges of journalism
Jurist, two UGA benefactors and adminstrators to get Blue Key Award
Grant will establish partnership with Tunisian institutions
Peach State Poll: Georgians still on guard one year after attacks
It’s safe, honey!
Campus Closeup
Administrative Changes
Newsmakers
Track record: UGA libraries applies new specs to records
New takes on landscapes
Campus News
Construction projects add new structures to campus
By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu
Several major construction projects at the university will add important new structures to campus while complying with a core
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| The new five-level East Campus Village parking deck will open for business this week with room for 850 vehicles. (Photo by Peter Frey) |
tenet of the campus master plan to shift parking from surface lots to decks.
The opening of the East Campus Village parking deck Nov. 4 is the first step in transforming a parking lot on East Campus into a spacious and attractive new living community for students.
Meanwhile, plans for the Coverdell Center for the Biomedical and Health Sciences are proceeding now that the Carlton Street parking deck can accommodate vehicles that have parked in the Stegeman Coliseum lot.
A central principle of the long-range campus master plan adopted in 1998 is to migrate parking from inner-campus surface lots to decks. The reason is twofold: to reduce congestion and improve safety on campus streets and to make better use of valuable, and dwindling, inner-campus land.
The five-level East Campus Village deck, on the eastern campus rim near the Athens perimeter, is the first structure to be completed in the university’s new East Campus Village. Covering about an acre, the deck has a capacity for 850 vehicles, plus space for an additional 400 vehicles in an adjacent surface lot.
The deck replaces approximately 600 spaces in the East Campus parking lot that will be lost when four residence halls are built during the next two years. Work on the first of those buildings will begin in January.
In addition to the parking deck and residence halls, the East Campus Village will include a new dining hall immediately north of the Ramsey Student Center. The intersection of River Road and Carlton Street near the Ramsey Student Center has been reconfigured to accommodate the 56,534-square-foot building. Construction is expected to begin in January, and the hall will be open for fall semester 2004.
As part of the East Campus Village work, the parking services building now in the East Campus parking lot will be removed next March. Parking services staff will work out of several existing buildings until their new offices are available on the first floor of the new dining hall.
Along with relocating parking, the East Campus Village project adheres to another master plan mandate: to improve the campus environment. A number of young maple and oak trees that are growing in the East Campus parking lot will be transplanted to the area around the new parking deck at the request of the Real Estate Foundation, says Dexter Adams, physical plant grounds department manager.
Several trees were moved last spring to the agricultural arena on Milledge Avenue and survived the summer drought with little apparent damage, according to Adams.
A groundbreaking ceremony for the Coverdell Center, across from the College of Veterinary Medicine on Agricultural Drive, is scheduled for Jan. 22. Preparatory work will begin immediately, but most of the parking will be preserved until heavy construction begins in April.
Those spaces will be absorbed by the Carlton Street parking deck, which opened last year. With a capacity for 820 vehicles, the deck has never been oversubscribed.
The deck, plus several hundred spaces that were made available in nearby lots when the deck was built, more than replace all the spaces in the former coliseum parking lot.
The $40 million Coverdell building is a key part of the university’s growing biomedical initiative. Scientists will use the building to conduct research in such areas as biomedicine, agriculture, ecology and environmental sciences, and it will be the home of the new Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute.
The addition of about 5,200 seats to the north upper deck of Sanford Stadium will affect parking, mostly for students, around Reed Hall. About 75 spaces in the Reed lot and along “Reed Alley” will be lost to the work.
A few spaces have already been removed by preliminary staging for the work, but most will remain until major construction gets under way in December, after football season and fall semester end. Parking services will give a prorated rebate to those who lose their assigned space and allow them to exchange their permit for another lot.
While work proceeds on the East Campus Village, Coverdell and Reed projects, construction is winding down on the Baldwin Street improvements, which have tied up the busy North Campus thoroughfare for more than a year.
All work should be finished, the fencing removed and the street completely open by the end of November, according to Adams.
The project, which began in spring of 2001, features a speed-calming island at the intersection of Baldwin Street and Sanford Drive.
Other improvements include a large area for pedestrians to wait to cross the street, retaining walls and plantings to keep pedestrians from crossing except at the traffic signal, and new water lines, curbs and gutters. |
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