Friday, February 23, 2007
Lot 59, the fenced-off parking lot southwest of Memorial Stadium, won’t reopen until late April and construction will temporarily disrupt traffic on 11th Street as well.
Jim Modig, director of design and construction, said the parking lot needed storm sewer improvements in order to handle large rainstorms. He said the project had been on a list of deferred maintenance projects for more than 10 years since a study by Black & Veatch determined that the area could not handle “10-year events.” A 10-year event is a rainstorm so large that it theoretically happens once every 10 years.
The football facility that will be built this spring at the site caused the project to be bumped up on the list. Modig said he aimed to have the project completed before the Kansas Relays to avoid parking problems at the meet.
Scheduled improvements include installing larger underground pipes designed to carry large volumes of water to sewers and installing a storm pond in the field at the corner of 11th and Maine Streets, northwest of the stadium.
Post-construction, Modig said the pond would only fill up during rainfall and would then trickle out as the area dried, helping to avoid flooding of the area during rainfall.
Without the improvements, Modig said a severe rainstorm could flood Memorial Stadium with several inches of water.
The loss of parking in lot 59 left many students looking for open spaces in other lots. Donna Hultine, director of parking and transit, said the best place to find additional parking was in lot 94, east of the stadium.
“I know that won’t help the students in JRP much, but for people parking and walking to the boulevard, hopefully that won’t be too far out of the way,” she said.
Lane Stallbaumer, Rossville sophomore, parked in one of the few spaces not closed off in the stadium lot but said he only found a spot because he had class at 8 a.m.
Some students parked in the gravel lot west of the stadium on Tuesday until at least one car became stuck in the muddy lot and had to be pulled out by construction workers. Hultine said the lot was especially muddy because recent snow and rain washed away the top layer of gravel. She advised against parking there until it dried up.
Stallbaumer said he saw the girl whose car was stuck in the mud while he was leaving the lot Tuesday afternoon.
“There was one guy trying to push her out but there was no way he was going to be able to get her out by himself,” he said. “I’d guess they probably had to tow her eventually.”
The storm sewer project precedes several other construction projects that will take place soon in the area. Many of the spots currently blocked off will be lost to the football facility and practice fields. Construction crews plan to pave a lot on the hill between JRP Hall and Memorial Stadium to replace those spots. Modig said the current construction would probably overlap with work on the new lot.
Kansan staff writer Kyle Carter can be contacted at kcarter@kansan.com.
— Edited by Kelly Lanigan
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