ALEXIS MONTGOMERY | Reporter
The West Clay rehabilitation project is expected to finish construction in January of 2021.
According to the St. Charles city website, the project will eventually renovate half a mile of West Clay St., from Duchesne Dr. to past the Lindenwood entrance by the Scheidegger Center.
It also has involved the demolition of four buildings near West Clay and Droste, including one Lindenwood house, 1010 Chargene St.
Nina Stewart, an area co-ordinator in student housing, said no one has lived in the house on Chargene for over a year.
Living with construction has been the norm for Lindenwood students living in housing around Droste, with road projects going on since October 2016.
The West Clay rehabilitation project has been going on for over a year now. Traffic cones and confusing routes have caused students to work their schedule around the construction.
Spencer Redd, a sophomore who lives at the Linden Lodge, a dorm one mile from campus, has experienced this.
“It’s annoying just because they’ve been working out there since last year, but I usually go around it just so I can be on time,” Redd said.
Not only do students have to take alternate routes, but the construction can be especially confusing to drivers, sophomore Addasyn Zeller said.
“I once went down the wrong way because of the cones and it was traumatizing,” Zeller said, “The construction really throws me off and makes me angry.”
Image from the St. Charles city website
According to the city website, the project began due to “poor pavement and sidewalk conditions.” It also states that the finished project will “rehab the roadway, provide bicycle and pedestrian facilities along West Clay Street, underground the overhead utilities, install decorative lighting and improve roadway drainage.”
The project will also extend Droste past West Clay and re-align the intersection between the streets.
Below is an interactive map showing the planned construction. The red icons indicate demolished properties, an the red lines show the approximate area being improved, including the extension and re-alignment of Droste.
Map by Matt Hampton
John • Feb 21, 2020 at 1:00 pm
It’s gonna take ANOTHER YEAR to get all of this done??? Where’s the SENSE OF HUSTLE? Is it “really necessary” to take FIVE YEARS???
*sigh*
I can SCARCELY REMEMBER a time, prior to moving to St. Charles in December 2016, when the intersection of Droste and West Clay *didn’t have a bunch of roadwork and obstacles* that made it SUCH A HASSLE! Really makes driving to the nearby Little Caesar’s a HUGE hassle, btw (although, truth be told, that location probably wasn’t the best decision, in any case)
I swear, for some reason, in this country there seem to be FAR TOO MANY ridiculous delays in construction projects, esp. road stuff!!! God forbid they get it all done w/in a reasonable timeframe, amirite