With Mother Nature's recent decision to make up for the lack of rain in this summer's drought, it can be hard to imagine that the construction on Anderson Street will be finished on time.
However, Richard Vance, associate vice president of Facilities Management, expects that the street will be open in time for the Dec. 1 deadline.
"We are literally 30 days away from opening the street," he said. Vance anticipates the first base coat of asphalt will be laid at the end of next week. The next stages of the project, which will be completed after the opening of the road, is installing the light posts, planting the trees and building a monument to better the entrance to DePauw.
Vance said that the contractor anticipated a few days of inclement weather, and that the recent rainfall has slowed construction down a few days, but not enough to delay the opening.
"The contractor would say that they worked as diligently as possible," Vance said. "From my perspective, there were days where there was not a lot of activity going on on the street itself. You sit back as an observer and ask, 'Why is that?'"
However, Vance did note that the issue was not a lack of manpower, but rather that some supplies were not delivered in a timely manner.
"DePauw is truly benefiting from its partnership with the city of Greencastle," Vance said, despite the setbacks.
Yet, the students that are directly impacted by the construction have a slightly different view on the "benefits" of the partnership.
Junior Vincent Guzzetta, who works for the ambulance service Putnam County Operation Life, cites a complaint that impacted both the DePauw community and the Greencastle community.
"Before they had opened up Bloomington Street, you couldn't drive the ambulance down that way," he said. "You had to actually take a roundabout way to respond to calls, which is really frustrating when you're trying to get to somebody to help them out. An extra minute or two is really frustrating if you are responding to a patient."
Senior David Kunkel, whose room is on Anderson Street, is woken up by the noise nearly every morning.
"It hadn't been too bad," Kunkel said, "but now they're starting to use jackhammers."
Kunkel points to a recent morning after pulling an all-nighter, when he needed to sleep.
"I was woken up at about 8:30 [a.m.] in the morning, hours before my first class," he said. "I just couldn't get back to sleep."
Even without considering the obvious and serious problem of the noise from the construction, Kunkel has concerns about the deadline being met.
"I didn't think that it would take as long as it's taking, and I don't think that they're going to have it done by the projected date of Dec. 1," he said.
Based on the university's projection, students and community members should be able to access the new and improved Anderson Street by the end of November.