While many students were away from campus this summer, the maintenance crew at Baker University was hard at work making changes and improvements to the campus.
Physical Plant Director Gary Walbridge said the most expensive project over the summer was the renovation of Liston Stadium.
“We’re still getting invoices for the football field,” Walbridge said. “We were looking at spending two million dollars, but we’ve gone slightly over that.”
Artificial turf was laid on the field, trees were removed to keep leaves from falling on the turf and Walbridge said everything else on the playing field level has been turned to asphalt.
“The field is down. The track is being laid. Our goal is to have it ready by Sept. 1,” Walbridge said.
New visitor bleachers have been installed at the football field and the old bleachers have been refurbished and placed at the North Park soccer facility.
Another major project for maintenance this summer was a $50,000 facelift of Irwin Hall.
Irwin hall director Jana Collins said she was pleased with the improvements.
“I think anything we can do, just in the little steps, makes a big improvement in the environment,” she said. “It’s made it a lot more open and appealing. Within the past two years Irwin has changed remarkably and made a much more open and welcoming environment.”
Changes have also been made to the other residence halls. New roofs were planned for Denious and Gessner Halls.
Gessner hall director Steve Lovelady said he moved in before the roof of Gessner was completed.
“Construction woke me up every morning at 8:00,” he said.
Despite the noise, Lovelady said he was pleased with Gessner’s new roof.
“We hadn’t had any leakage problems yet, but I heard about problems in the other dorms,” Lovelady said.
Walbridge said there will also be changes to some of the parking lots.
“There will be a paved parking lot behind Denious in the next month or so,” he said.
Walbridge acknowledged the pavement of the parking lot may cause an inconvenience to students but said the project should take two or three days.
Work is scheduled for Irwin’s parking lot also.
“The curb that runs along Ninth Street will be pushed out to allow for another row of cars,” Walbridge said.
Collins said the parking lot has needed work.
“Parking is definitely an issue,” she said. “People usually end up parking very far away because we have such a full building. It’s much needed.”
Both Mulvane Hall and Harter Union saw renovations, including new roofs.
On the bottom floor of the library, one computer classroom was made smaller to create a larger workstation for contractors installing a new computer system at Baker.