Natalie Allison Senior Reporter
Seeing construction projects is nothing out of the ordinary for students at Elon. Every year, the university is working on new projects, both large and small, to grow, beautify and update the campus. The construction is often inconvenient and the noise of machinery gets old, but once the projects are finished, there are rarely any complaints from students.
Such might be the case in a few years when (or if, rather) the university begins construction on a new School of Communications, which most likely will be located in the current McMichael parking lot. That’s 82,000 square feet of communications building, and a project that is expected to take at least two years. Two years. What will it be like having a construction zone smack in the middle of campus for years on end? The answer is that it will probably be really annoying. Some students will probably hate having to park all the way behind the Francis Center and having to take a shuttle to campus. Commuter students and those who live on the southwest part of campus will lose a parking lot that already used to fill up everyday. It will probably be inconvenient.
But it will be a great addition to the university, which has been in a state of change for decades. All of these changes have made this institution the place it is today. The beautiful green lawn in front of Alamance that surrounds the brick area and fountain used to be a parking lot. Students and faculty could park right in front of the building. Pretty convenient, right? But in the grand scheme of things, our cars’ close proximity to buildings was no match for a beautiful landscape and pedestrian area for students. And campus adapted. And it grew. And people love it. It seems like one generation of students endures construction for the next. And usually, it’s worth it. We’ll all come back to visit in a decade and be proud of the place we spent our college careers (and our tuition dollars).
For more information about the planned construction projects, read Natalie's story.