Construction snarls campus, town

by Joe King

As the old saying goes, Illinois has only two seasons: winter and construction. The latter is upon us.

This summer, roadwork will close various streets on and around campus for extended periods of time. A map outlining those projects can be found on the university’s Web site.

Roadwork that might send faculty, staff students and visitors scrambling for a detour on campus includes:

• College Avenue reconstruction and bridge repairs through Aug. 15. After four decades of patchwork repairs, College Avenue will be completely rebuilt with a new base, asphalt, sidewalks, lighting and more. The road will be closed from Castle Drive east to Woodley Road throughout the project. The bridge over the Kishwaukee River also will be resurfaced and remodeled as part of the project.
• Lincoln Drive North resurfacing through Aug. 15. The brutal cold and freeze/thaw cycles of last winter took a serious toll on Lincoln Drive North, with numerous large pot holes developing that resulted in the need for extensive resurfacing of the roadway.
• Castle Drive resurfacing. Late in the summer, as work on College Avenue is completed, Castle Drive will close for resurfacing. The project is expected to take about a week and will be completed before the return of students.
• Parking lots X and W paving. These two gravel parking lots, located northeast of the residence halls, will be upgraded from gravel to asphalt. No specific dates for the work have yet been set, but they are to be completed before students return in the fall.

The inconveniences caused by those projects are aggravated by roadwork elsewhere in DeKalb.

Route 38, from roughly Pearl Street to Carroll Avenue, is a maze of construction barricades and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

The City of DeKalb is currently in the process of replacing water mains along Route 38. When that work concludes in late June, the Illinois Department of Transportation will step in and begin replacing the bridge over the Kishwaukee River.

Unlike the College Avenue bridge work, this is a complete rebuild and will take about one year. During that time, Route 38 will be reduced to one lane of traffic in each direction.

A bit further west, work on widening Annie Glidden Road has been under way since March and is expected to continue until the end of October.

As if all that wasn’t enough, six of the city’s seven railroad crossings are currently closed for reconstruction that is expected to last until Saturday.

6-4-07