by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
The Stanford Road entrance to campus is ready for traffic after being closed for nearly two years, but it remains blocked so construction workers can use it for parking, the project's superintendent said.
"I'm really just reserving me some parking spaces over there," said Darrel Massegee of Jaynes Corporation.
The entrance at Central Avenue and Stanford Road was closed in November 2005 for the construction of George Pearl Hall for the architecture school, said Benson Hendrix, a spokesman for the University.
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He said the cost of the construction project is estimated to be more than $28 million.
The building and the entrance are scheduled to be open by Sept. 11 and will be open on time,
he said.
The construction team is ahead of schedule for the project and will use the Stanford Road entrance for parking while they finish the last details of their work, Massegee said.
"Construction-wise, we're pretty much ready for them to move in their furniture," he said. "Since we're done early, I'm reserving that for our cars and stuff, so they don't kick us way out if we need to be here."
Massegee said UNM is reviewing the building's details and to make sure everything is ready.
"They go into each room of the building and see if the paint needs to be touched up and things need to be vacuumed and stuff like that, but we're pretty much ready to go," he said.
The entrance will open once the building is approved by UNM's inspectors and the furniture has been moved in, he said.
"They'll probably want to use the entrance for the moving trucks, since they haven't moved the furniture into the building yet," he said. "It will probably be opened up at the end of the week."
The closed entrance is an inconvenience for students who park in A Lot across from Johnson Field, student Christine Karver said.
"It would be cool if it were open," she said. "Now, you have to go all the way down to Yale (Boulevard) and come back up. When classes are starting or ending, there are all kinds of people crossing the street by the Bookstore, and you have to wait forever."
Workers have already opened up parts of A Lot that were closed for construction, Hendrix said.
But he said the University won't ask workers to open the entrance and park elsewhere, because the construction site is run by Jaynes Corporation until the contract is complete.
