Campus may look a little different when students return to LSU in August.
Construction on various parts of campus started earlier this summer, with holes being dug in the Quad and streets like Tower Drive completely blocked off.
“I’ve been here 20 years and I’ve never seen this much disturbance on campus,” Dennis Mitchell, LSU’s campus landscape architect, said. “This is a good thing. When campus is changing, it’s changing for the better.”
But what exactly is changing on campus, and more importantly: when will it be done?
The biggest project currently underway is a utility project that involves piping for several buildings on campus. Parts of the Quad, roads and other areas on campus are being dug up in order to reach these pipes.
“All this work underground is to bring new chilled water from the central plants so we can cool buildings,” Greg Lacour, Director of Campus Planning, said. “Those pipes were 80, 90, 100 years old. So these are new pipes to replace all of that, which is why it’s such a big deal.”
Other changes include new lamppost bases around campus as part of LSU’s lighting initiative. The LSU Law Center, Highland Road, Touchdown Village, the Quad and lights around the campus lakes will all be upgraded.
“We’ve been talking about lighting forever,” Mitchell said. “I think you’ll notice a difference this semester when you come back.”
General repairs will also be made to certain buildings on campus, including the Student Union, Nicholson and Law Center roofs.
Each of these projects contributes to a larger plan for LSU’s campus.
“Every project is filtered through the master plan,” Mitchell said. “Everything we do is the master plan. It gives us guidance.”
LSU’s master plan for campus was created in 2017 under former LSU President F. King Alexander.
The goal of the master plan, according to its vision statement, is to “provide a practical and flexible framework that sustainably guides and integrates development and capital investment on the campus and in the community over the next decade and beyond.”
The plan uses previous planning efforts as a guide, including the 2003 master plan which saw around $1.4 billion invested into LSU over 14 years. Space on LSU’s campus increased by 23% under the previous plan.
The new master plan began being developed in 2015 and took nearly two years to make. It considers multiple aspects of LSU’s campus that need improvement to help accommodate more students as the university continues to grow. The plan has five guiding principles:
- Connect Campus and Community
- Celebrate Distinct LSU Campus and Context
- Support High Performance Academic and Research
- Enhance Student Life
- Promote Environmental Stewardship
Every project to improve LSU’s campus is run through the master plan to see if it aligns with the university’s long term goals.
“That’s the whole point of doing a master plan,” Mitchell said. “If we just made decisions without it…”
“We end up with a library in the middle of the Quad,” Danielle Mayeaux, LSU’s campus civil engineer, said.
Construction not only impacts campus, but parking and transportation as well. The main projects currently impacting parking and on-campus transportation are the Utility Project, Union Hub Project, Fieldhouse Drive Construction and Coates C Lot Construction.
“The biggest thing that’s impacting campus right now, when it comes to construction, is the utility project which is touching every little piece on campus,” Brian Favela, LSU’s Director of Parking and Transportation, said. “They’ve taken up 300 commuter spaces. Luckily we’ll get that back at the beginning of school.”
The Coates C Lot will also reopen before the semester begins, and the Union Hub is scheduled to be finished by August 11. The construction on Fieldhouse Drive will not be finished, but the plan is to gravel over the road and pause construction during football season to not impact game days. After football season, it will be closed again and construction will continue.
“It’s just 150,000 [people] on campus during game day, it’s the only thing that made sense,” Favela said. “The players are still getting dropped off, I think, at Victory Circle.”
Favela said that he understands that there will be issues with parking and bus routes that will need to be fixed during the semester, but there’s no way to avoid some disturbances while campus undergoes so much construction.
“Parking is the first and last experience,” Favela said. “We have to understand everything that’s going on on campus in order to make sure we do this right.”
Parking and Transportation will be putting an emphasis on communicating with students during the semester, according to Favela. He said that the department will continue sending out its weekly newsletter to update staff and students.
There are projects that have been completed in lieu of the ongoing construction. The French House’s walkway is complete and the Huey P. Long building’s renovations are finished.
New signage around campus featuring braille has been installed in several buildings as well, as part of a student government initiative.
LSU Planning, Design and Construction expects to take on more projects after Louisiana Legislature granted $232 million to the university in its most recent session.
“It’s all been assigned, identified by specific projects, and those projects will be implemented over time,” Lacour said. “One of them is the library.”
The LSU Library, which will become the Library Learning Commons, will be built where the current electrical engineering building is. Students and faculty have made many complaints about the library’s condition, and LSU has finally received the money to accomplish its needed renovations.
An architect for the new library will be selected in September, according to Lacour.
The new library won’t begin being built anytime soon though, and many planned projects won’t start until next year.
One of these projects is the new interdisciplinary science building, which will cost around $150 million, according to Capital Projects Director Paul Favaloro. The new building will be where the current Dairy Science building is, and demolition of the Dairy Science building is currently scheduled to start in late spring of next year.
Dairy Science, including the Dairy Store, will temporarily be in the old Food Science building until construction is completed. Then, it will be moved into the new science building when construction is finished, essentially in the same spot.
“There may be a small period of time when you can’t buy [ice cream],” Mitchell said, but LSU Planning, Design and Construction is hopeful that this won’t happen.
But what can students expect campus to look like when they come back in August?
“The goal is for when students come back in August, to have the dust settled and have paths that are open,” Mitchell said.
Some of the construction will not be completed when students return, but some projects, such as the Fieldhouse Drive construction, will be put on pause during the semester.
Other projects will continue throughout the semester, but alternative paths around the construction will be built to help the flow of traffic and pedestrians.
“There’s going to be some growing pains, there’s going to be some things that are not going to be prim and proper as they walk through campus,” Favaloro said. “If there’s any issues with any of that or any disturbances, please let us know. We certainly don’t want to be creating disturbances for students and whatnot along the way.”
