Longhorn Drive is closed and construction has started after multiple delays. However, more delays could push the completion back even further.

Photograph by Lacey Vandermeer

The project was scheduled to be completed by November 2007 before being delayed. The cost of the project was estimated at $355,100 by UW-Platteville. Bids for the project were higher than estimated.

“The lowest bid for the project was $565,100 by M.Z. Construction Inc.,” Robert Cramer, assistant chancellor for administrative services, said. “The $210,000 difference forced UW-Platteville to request extra funding from the State Building Commission, pushing the start of the project back to March 26.

The project was further delayed when electrical circuits were found embedded near the retaining wall on the west side of the road, Cramer said. Alliant Energy workers moved the circuits west, away from the area under construction, so the project could begin.

Now that construction has started Longhorn Drive is closed.

“The closing of the road makes a little bit of a hassle but it is easy to get around it,” Cody Sorge, a sophomore agriculture business major, said.

The project started during the school year instead of waiting until summer because of the poor condition of the retaining wall, which is made of stone and began to fail, Pete Davis, assistant director of facilities management said.

“There is no summer at UW-P anyway; it just as busy then as it is now,” Davis said.

The retaining wall is the first step in the reconstruction of Longhorn Drive. Tearing down the wall will provide a new angle that Longhorn Drive will follow, Davis said.

The entrance of faculty lot 12 and resident parking lot 25 will be torn up and re-laid, eliminating the curve at the entrances, said Davis.

The Longhorn Drive construction will not reach the corner of Greenwood Avenue and Longhorn Drive, Cramer said. The road will only be torn up part of the way because the road can be straightened without reaching that corner.

The construction crew is also building a sidewalk that will run down the west side of the new Longhorn Drive, Davis said. The sidewalk will follow Longhorn Drive up to the new engineering building.

The project followed state requirements for starting a construction process. UW-P decided they wanted to redo the road; the project proposal was presented to and approved by the UW System Board of Regents and then approved by the State Building Commission, Cramer said.

Longhorn Drive is scheduled to reopen May 9.

The date of May 9 is subject to change due to weather delays and unforeseen utility and construction delays, Cramer said.

Even after it is open, Longhorn Drive might not be finished.

“The road being open means that the road is drivable; the road could just be gravel when it is opened,” Davis said. It will take some extra time to schedule a paving company to come in and finish the job.

“I heard the area was going to be under construction for a while and UW-P provided sufficient notification of the closer,” Jordan O’Connell, senior history major, said. “We should change our motto to ‘a school of constant construction.’”