Cranes dot campus

By PAULA PANT Colorado Daily Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 6, 2006 1:03 AM MDT

If it seems like the CU-Boulder campus is strewn with orange cones and yellow cranes - get used to it.

Several construction projects, which broke ground in May, are not expected to be completed until 2007.

A $33.3 million renovation on the Leeds School of Business, which began May 12, will feature a 65,000-square-foot, four-story addition onto the building's south side.

Yet the project won't be completed until summer 2007, throwing the business school into a frenzy in their quest to house classes and faculty offices.

“It's been a mad scramble to find places to deliver our programs, and the law school has been incredibly helpful by providing us space,” said Dennis Ahlburg, dean of the Leeds School of Business, in a release put out by CU.

Fleming Law Building will house business classes during the 2006-2007 academic year. Classes this summer are scattered across the Boulder campus.

The addition, which includes 15 extra classrooms, a full-service dining area and four business suites, is needed to accommodate the 3,600 students who take classes in the building - more than double the 1,400 students the building was designed to handle.

Meanwhile, three out of four recreational fields improvements are already under way.

Crews are installing synthetic turf and lighting on three fields at Kittredge Field, renovating the natural turf that abounds Franklin Field, and building four outdoor basketball courts on the east side of Coors Events/Conference Center.

“The courts here at the Rec(reation) Center are always packed,” Diane Belz, project manager for field renovation, told the Colorado Daily.

She said the project was guided by “feasibility study” conducted four years ago which showed that “the students had decided they don't want to go to South campus” to use additional field space.

As a result, “they scaled back the plans to just do the renovations here on campus,” said Belz.

The $5.7 million renovation will also install new sod and drainage systems on Farrand Field, construct an 18-inch stone wall around its perimeter and add a 50-by-30-foot concrete stage on the field's north end for concerts and events.

Farrand Field will close for one year, beginning August 26, as crews work on these improvements.

Contact Paula Pant about this story at pant@coloradodaily.com or (303) 443-9508.

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