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Posted March 25 at 4:34 pm by Aimee Curl

uwedu

The new UW Educational Outreach building was supposed to look like this, but instead the prime real estate at the southeast corner of University Ave. and Campus Parkway has, for a year and a half, been the fenced-off site of a 20-foot hole with the buried beginnings of a concrete foundation covered in white plastic.

Construction on the building was stopped in October 2006 due to the high cost of concrete and other delays. "In reevaluating the project, we thought for the stage it was at and the pressures it was undergoing, it was best to terminate the project and save [the space] for another day," explains Richard Chapman, associate vice president of the university's Capital Projects Office. He says stopping construction on a building once the ground has been broken is "extremely unusual," and adds that this is a first in his seven years at the UW.

The corner has sat without repair for so long due to negotiations between the university and the contractor, Ledcor, on how to terminate the work. Court documents show that the parties agreed to end court proceedings in September 2007 (which generally indicates a settlement), but Chapman wouldn't comment on the details saying only that "we're still working our way through that."

For the College Inn Pub, located in the basement of the building next door, it's been a longtime of looking at a hole. "The whole project has been bungled from the word go," says pub co-owner Shea Wilson. "I'm tired of it. I'm tired of living in a construction zone."

The end may be near. Chapman says they've started to fill the hole, but have been delayed by winter's heavy rains (you can't use wet sediment for backfill). Once it's filled, the UW plans to plant grass, but the fence will stay up for safety reasons. And the university doesn't want to make it into a park or parking lot because that would mean getting a new permit. "We'll pour sidewalks to make it aesthetically pleasing, but that's the limit of it. We don't want to spend more," says Chapman, adding that it will cost about $300,000 to fill the hole.

But the long term future of the site remains unknown. "We may use it in two or 10 years," Chapman says. "I don't know."

Topics: Construction Gone Wrong

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