Cornellians returned to a campus under construction. Various projects are constricting pedestrian and vehicle traffic along primary campus thoroughfares. Ho Plaza, arguably the main street of campus, is particularly under assault.
At both ends, construction projects assail the walkability of Ho Plaza. The busiest section, where Sage Chapel, Olin Hall, and McGraw Tower flank all sides of the walkway, has been completely closed off to through traffic. Each day, scaffolding climbs higher and higher around McGraw Tower.
According to Cornell Media Relations, the scaffolding around McGraw Tower is quite “complex and has taken time to engineer and install.” The work’s intricacy, according to Cornell, required a large staging area to be closed to the public. Students have taken to circumnavigating or going through Sage Chapel to travel the area.
However, due to damage to Sage Chapel’s enormous pipe organ, the university closed the building to through traffic last week.
Students can expect this disruption to continue through the academic year. “Work will continue through late 2023, be paused during winter, and start up again in spring 2024.” The administration anticipates work on McGraw Tower to continue “through late fall 2024.”
The northern end of Ho Plaza is not the only area closed to pedestrians. At the southern end of the plaza, abutting the intersection of Campus Road and College Avenue, a small section of pavement has been fenced in for restoration.
Much of College Avenue was closed to pedestrians for the first week of classes, with stretches alongside Hollister and Snee Halls under construction. While those areas have since been cleaned of obstructions, continuing work on Anabel Taylor Hall has rendered the TCAT bus stop and surrounding pavement impassable. Nearby, the Thurston Hall extension has likewise disrupted foot traffic on the south side of the Engineering Quad.
On the northern side of Campus Road, Sage Hall is also undergoing improvements. Several exits on the southern and western elevations of the building have been cordoned off, with landscape and structural work temporarily encroaching on footpaths in the area.
This is to say nothing of work on the former Hoy Field, with the area being busily redeveloped into a new CIS building. Further away, renovations on Balch Hall continue to impede foot traffic on North Campus.
Construction at Cornell is almost a constant, but so much work in so many areas of campus is rather unprecedented. One cannot walk anywhere on central campus without being forced to evade some project somewhere. According to several Ithacans, Cornell usually front loads construction projects in late May and early June, aiming to complete as much work as possible while students are off campus.
The abundance of smaller-scale pavement improvement projects would imply delays in Cornell getting projects started over the summer; however, according to Media Relations, there were no summer delays in construction.
Cornell also indicated that Ithaca’s building inspector – Ithaca only has one inspector for the entire city – was not a contributing factor in the slowdown.
Although College Ave. is now reopened to traffic, students who drive the streets of Ithaca will undoubtedly notice several off-campus projects in addition to Cornell’s work. State Street (New York State Route 79), one of the main downtown thoroughfares, is undergoing significant improvements that have congested traffic to two lanes with few dedicated turning lanes into Collegetown.
Another prominent closure is Pine Tree Road near East Hill Plaza and the Oxley Equestrian Center. Unlike State Street, Pine Tree Road has been dug up. These projects, says Cornell, are state and local efforts with reopening expected “by the end of September.”
