FAYETTEVILLE — University of Arkansas officials are calling it the price of progress.
Administrators at the Fayetteville campus have approved the installation of a temporary construction road that will run through parts of the Old Main lawn and historic campus core.
The road is needed for heavy trucks and other traffic related to the renovation and expansion of Ozark and Vol Walker halls, which is set to begin this summer and be completed in the summerof 2013.
UA Chancellor G. David Gearhart said most campus visitors will understand the road’s necessity, even if it disturbs the picturesque setting.
“People are reasonable and they are going to realize this is a temporary situation,” he said. “I’ve been assured by our facilities management team that everything will be put back like it is currently and maybe even better, frankly.
“I wish there were another solution, but I’m confident that this is temporary,” saidGearhart, a Fayetteville native who earned both a law degree and doctorate at UA. “It’s really the only situation we have to service to those buildings.”
B. Alan Sugg, president of the University of Arkansas System, said he’s passed along the road plan to system trustees.
Neither Gearhart or Sugg have received any replies from trustees, they said.
“It’s just something that has to be done,” Sugg said. “You never like to do something like that but I have every confidence that after they’re finished ... that they’ll get it back to what it was before.”
Mike Johnson, UA’s associate vice chancellor for facilities management, said construction of the road is planned to start in June. The road will be in place for two years, he said.
Johnson, who has walked the route several times, said there will be “minimum to no” excavation for the road bed.
Facilities management will cover the grass with a geotechnical fabric and place steel plates over areas where the road crosses over sidewalks that have been stamped with graduates’ names, known as Senior Walk.
Originally known as University Hall, Old Main is the oldest building on the campus. It was constructed between 1873 and 1875. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
The university designates the area east of Old Main one of two campus arboretums. The temporary route will affect only a few trees, Johnson said.
“It leaves the Old Main lawn intact,” he said. “The view is still there. We value the Old Main east lawn as much or more than anyone who has concerns. We do not do this lightly.”
UA will create a four-way stop where the road starts at Arkansas Avenue and Lafayette Street to allow construction traffic to flow into and out of campus. Facilities management will dismantle a rock wall piece-by-piece in order to create the entrance.
Each stone will be numbered and stored. The process will be recorded so the wall will be put back exactly as it is now, Johnson said.
The road, which is 20 feet across and open to two-way traffic, will continue west across the lawn and past Ozark Hall, completed in 1940 as UA’s business administration building. Ozark Hall was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
The road will extend through the area between Old Main and Ozark until it becomes one-way just south of Vol Walker, competed in 1935 as the university library and placed on the historic register in 1992.
The route will veer northwest of Vol Walker and end in a parking lot that connects to Maple Street.
The entrance gate will close at night and gates will be put in place at multiple points along the route and monitored by flaggers, according to Johnson.
“Wrapped around everything we are doing is safety,” he said. “It cuts time, it saves money, it makes the overall jobs more efficient, and it keeps student and pedestrian flow efficient.”
A potential route for the construction road could have been the former Campus Drive, a city street that was closed decades ago to create a walkway between Maple and Dickson streets. But construction is underway at the corner of Maple and Campus Walk. The university is placing the $1.1 million Centennial Gate there, as well as extending a water pipe.
UA is also making utility improvements to Campus Walk, Johnson said.
The gate will be made of made of granite, limestone and wrought iron and will rise nearly 30 feet. It is being constructed with funds raised by the Alpha chapterof Pi Beta Phi sorority at UA. The gate and Campus Walk improvements aren’t scheduled for completion until November 1.
“If we waited on the gate it would be two years before we could be able to do that,” Gearhart said. “We made a commitment to the donors to get it moving. We were on a time schedule.
“To wait another two years probably would have not been acceptable to our benefactors,” he said.
The lawn has featured roads before, according to historical archives.
UA’s special collections division has in its files an undated, black-and-white photograph of a parking circle south of Old Main. It was taken by local resident Burch Grabill, who documented the campus through a series of photographs taken between 1907 and 1911.
Robert Leflar’s 1971 book, The First 100 Years: Centennial History of the University of Arkansas, features an aerial photograph of the parking circle, taken in 1926.
Sugg, a 1960 UA graduate, said he understands some people might consider the road unsightly, but he remembers the decade of 1981-91 when Old Main was closed because it had become dilapidated and was considered unsafe.
“Old Main had a fence around it,” Sugg said. “Weeds were growing up around Old Main. Now, that was a sad sight.
“There have been some disruptions along the way with the development of campus around Old Main. This is just one of those situations.” To contact this reporter:
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 10 on 05/21/2011