Widespread construction on LSU’s campus has altered the university’s landscape in recent months, causing disruption for some students and diversion for others.
For those who don’t have classes near the construction, the work is a novelty.
Finance senior Jackson Smith waits for the bus each day at a stop just opposite from the recent demolition of LSU’s creamery and dairy store. He said he was surprised at how much progress the crew made from day to day.
“They’re tearing it down quick and getting the trash out quicker,” Smith said. “And it’s pretty impressive, honestly.”
Anthropology freshman Waylon Gayle also said he enjoyed watching the projects. His father owns a construction company, and Gayle said he liked observing the workers and trying to figure out what they’re doing.
On the other hand, large sections of road-closing construction on both South Campus and Field House drives have made it harder for some to navigate from class to class.
Mass Communication sophomore Abbey O’Malley said she’d been watching for months the project that shut down a quarter-mile stretch of Field House Drive from the traffic circle by the Journalism Building to its intersection with South Campus Drive.
On a recent Thursday, she sat outside Lockett Hall, surveying the fenced-off area. Clouds of dust billowed from the site. O’Malley scrunched her eyes.
“I think it’s really inconvenient,” she said, “mainly because they didn’t really tell us about it before it started.”
O’Malley said she couldn’t understand why so much work was being done on the road during the school year’s busy spring semester. She also said she thought the construction posed a safety hazard.
She often sits outside the Journalism Building, and when the project first started, O’Malley said she watched student after student trip on the construction-mangled sidewalk just south of the traffic circle.
More than that, she lamented the projects’ slow progress.
“It seems like they don’t really get a lot done,” O’Malley said.
The construction closing South Campus and Field House drives began two years ago in spring of 2022 and is estimated to end in May, according to Executive Director of Facility & Property Oversight Tammy Millican.
The project, according to Facility Services, is part of the university’s Utilities Modernization Initiative — in this instance, to improve LSU’s central cooling and heating by updating underground distribution lines.
But the most recent surge of work has been most disruptive in its final stages, according to some students.
Kinesiology sophomore Michael Trinh sat recently on the west side of Field House Drive. Behind him, an excavator moved dirt from one side of the street to the other, making a little pile bigger and a big pile littler.
Trinh said he understood the university needed upgrades.
The LSU system carries more than $1 billion in deferred maintenance, according to the Louisiana Board of Regents’ most recent estimate in March 2022.
But Trinh said construction on campus seemed never-ending.
“It’s never like, complete, like, when they get done with one thing, it’s on to the next,” he said. “And that’s not necessarily a bad thing if they’re trying to make improvements, but I feel like there might be better times to do it.”
