Chesapeake Area Construction Work Will End in Separate Pathways for Vehicles, Pedestrians
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Construction work near Northern Neck and the building's Starbucks will temporarily reroute pedestrian traffic on the northeast side of campus. (Kevin Loker)
Latte-seeking faculty members and students making a beeline for their cars in Rappahannock Parking Deck will need to adhere to a couple pedestrian detours for the next few months in order to reach their final destinations.
Construction work on a steam tunnel connection near Northern Neck is expected to temporarily change pedestrian traffic patterns until its completion early in the fall semester.
The current work, however — which will connect a steam tunnel to the new University Hall administrative and retail building — is only a portion of a larger redesign of the area, according to Director of Construction and Auxiliary Services Steve Morehouse. In the end, the main strip of the Chesapeake housing area will have a separate access road for vehicles on the west side of the existing walkway, with some short term parking spaces, a median and trees. A new, albeit smaller, walkway will rest where the existing walkway is presently.
The access road will eventually be extended further south, close to Southside, but it falls under another phase of construction related to the expansion of Fenwick Library, according to Morehouse.
Morehouse says the motive for the road extension is to separate vehicular traffic from pedestrian traffic “to the greatest extent possible.” When the time approached for work on the utility tunnel, university officials decided to combine the two projects — tunnel and road — into one.
The current phase of the project, originally intended to begin in May, is expected to take three months to complete, according to Morehouse. Design issues delayed its start, which Morehouse says then delayed necessary approvals from the State.
“While work will continue going into the semester, our expectation is the heavy, loud concrete work will be completed before students return,” Morehouse told Connect2Mason in an e-mail correspondence. “The goal is to minimize the impact on students and student residents to the greatest extent possible.”
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