The front entrance that will connect North and South Drives as the centerpiece of the construction project that has been going on since late April will open before Homecoming, according to Senior Vice President for Administration Dan Eck.
Eck, who has managed the approximately $3.2 million project since its start, said people will be able to drive into the new entrance from County Highway M before Homecoming weekend begins on Friday, Oct. 14.
“It will be open before then,” Eck said. “How many days before that is hard to tell yet. It depends a lot on the weather – how much rain they [the workers] get – because that slows down some of the work. But we still have a cushion of time that, even if it does rain a day or so, we’ll still be on schedule.”
The campus enhancements being done by Boldt Construction started April 25 when Reineking Court was closed and extended into a road that vehicles could access the entire campus from. Reineking was originally scheduled to reopen May 13, but inclement weather delayed the finish date until June 20, according to Director of Facilities Management and Planning Rich Haen, who, along with Manager of Groundskeeping Operations Joe Beniger, has overseen the project from a “boots on the ground” level since he was hired at Lakeland in early May.
“We anticipate everything in the front of campus being completed no later than Oct. 15,” Haen said. “What that means is the lighting and the fountain in the center of Old Main Plaza will be done, the areas seeded should be greening up—everything.”
Work on the main entrance and the ditch began when South Drive was closed around May 9.
After Homecoming, workers will turn the remainder of the ditch—the section that runs from Prof. Drive to the baseball field—into a stream and add a layer of asphalt to Reineking Court, Haen said.
Eck said the project has also included several “unplanned upgrades” to campus, like work on Lakeland’s roads. After Homecoming, workers will also remove the electrical poles in the WAK parking lot and plant electrical boxes underground to power campus.
“We did add some time intentionally to the project to take care of a few of these things that it really made sense to do while we had all of this construction equipment on site rather than having them come back in a year, which would cost a lot more money,” Eck said.
According to Eck, the three-year comprehensive fundraising campaign that Lakeland started about a year ago to pay for this project and three years of the annual fund has, to date, raised over $5 million of the approximately $6.5 million needed.
“That last million dollars will be equally as challenging as the first several millions because now we’re going for some smaller gifts from people,” he said. “We got some major contributions up front and, as you go on, the gifts start to get smaller and smaller, so it takes more to complete the campaign. There’s still a lot of work left to do, but we are far ahead of schedule on our fundraising goals for this project.”
Lakeland is placing bricks engraved with donors’ names on the east side of the Laun Center and in Old Main Plaza, the court yard being constructed in front of Old Main. The 4.5 by 7 inch Laun bricks cost $150 and the 12 by 12 inch and 12 by 18 inch Old Main Plaza bricks are $750 and $1,500, respectively.
Bricks paid for by a cut-off date in June will be set by Homecoming and the remainder will be set before Lakeland’s sesquicentennial celebration this summer.
Eck hopes the front entrance project will give prospective students a good impression of the college and kick start other projects by generating excitement among the record number of alumni expected to visit campus during the sesquicentennial.
“The college historically hasn’t had a ‘real’ front door. It’s had what looks like several back doors,” Eck said. “This is really going to engage people when they see it, and they’re going to get excited about the next 150 years of the college and what we can do once we go on to other projects.”