Starting at the beginning of May, workers and bulldozers ripped into the pavement of the east half of the University Court parking lots.

The Board of Trustees approved the funding for the project at the January 18 meeting, and the crews broke ground on May 6.

Facilities Planning and Management employees plan to improve the drainage of the area at a steep cost of $868,775.

The cost of the project encompasses labor, materials and equipment to improve the parking lot, along with repaving costs and installation of the new drainage system.

Rex Hilligoss, Facilities Planning and Management’s architect, said the parking lot project is phase two of two, and the first phase was completed two years ago.

“This parking lot was part of the apartment complex that was purchased by the university a number of years ago,” he said.

Mark Hudson, the director of University Housing and Dining Services, said the university purchased the complex around 1990.

“The buildings were built in the early 1970s, but the modern rules for drainage weren’t in place at that time,” he said. 

The project includes 6,500 square yards of the east half of the complex.

At the January BOT meeting, William Weber, the vice president for business affairs, announced that the university had paid project design projects and phase one construction costs totaling $956,671.

“This project addresses some drainage issues we’ve been having and provides other general improvements,” he said at the meeting.

Hilligoss said the funding from the project comes from parking funds.

Facilities Planning and Management employees started the process for parking lot renovation nearly 10 years ago.

“In 2004, we did a campus-wide survey of all parking lots and prioritized the repair order based on need,” he said. “Shortly after that, this lot was identified because of drainage issues that allowed water to enter into a couple of buildings in the southwest portion of the complex.”

Hilligoss said phase one relieved that issue.

Putting in a better system that included concrete curbing instead of asphalt made the west half of the parking lot much more substantial, Hudson said.

The project is of utmost importance because the water would flood into students’ apartments, Hudson said.

“The water table is so high, so we’ve been working for quite a while to engineer a project that would put in the right kind of underground drainage system,” Hudson said. “In addition to the water that falls from the heavens to the parking lots, we’re also taking the water off the roofs and piping that underground.”

The water will now be directly drained at various locations in the parking lot instead of being filtered from the top of the parking lot all the way to slightly lower-grade “bottom,” Hudson said.

The drained water will then flow into Carman Pond.

“The goal, ultimately, is to lower the water table out there so we have less issues with apartments flooding,” Hudson said.

On any given day of the workweek, Hilligoss said there will be several laborers working on the project.

“It varies with the type of work, but on average, there are 10 to 12 working on-site and in support roles,” he said.

Laborers from Feutz Contractors Inc. will be working to complete the project until mid-July, when Hilligoss said he hopes the construction will be completed.

“This type of work is weather-dependent and could be dramatically impacted one way or another,” he said.

Once the construction for phase two is done, Hudson said work will be done on other efforts around the area such as landscaping.

Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or redexter@eiu.edu.