In the summer, West Virginia University is not nearly as crowded with students as during the regular school year, which is why the school chose this period to finish a majority of the construction work completed on the renovation project at the Evansdale campus. In June 2011, university officials announced a $160 million project to renovate and replace old buildings on the grounds, according to The Charleston Daily Mail. The plan is to update older facilities to provide more space for students and spread the school's population out a bit to ease traffic congestion around the main campus.
Construction workers have been working hard all summer to get as much work done as possible. As the fall semester fast approaches, they are wrapping up the major projects, getting the backhoes and excavators off the lot and making room for the influx of students coming back to school. They completed a new, larger greenhouse to replace the old one, and a number of parking lot renovations have already been finished as well.
"We tried to finish up as much of the intrusive stuff over the summer that we could," John Thompson, the associate director of design and construction for WVU's facilities management, told the Daily Mail news provider.
While most of the work being done has been aimed at adding on to the campus, WVU will be short one residence hall this year. The State Journal reports a demolition crew tore down a co-ed residence hall at the WVU Institute of Technology's Montgomery campus. The 67,176-square-foot building was erected in 1969, but structural assessments determined it was unfit for use and so the building was demolished. Since the building was relatively new, officials are not going to let good resources go to waste. They plan to salvage as many of the bricks used for the building to reuse them in other projects.
