Denelson Estimable hastily swerves to the left and avoids crashing into another student as he rides his scooter through the Reitz Union North Lawn and The Hub’s two-meter-wide sidewalk.
Hundreds of students squeeze through the thin path daily as they run to class, grab food for lunch or meet up with friends. A danger both to those on foot and wheels, the tiny but mighty stretch has the potential to injure anyone who isn’t familiar with its blind spots.
Luckily, Estimable, a 20-year-old UF applied physiology and kinesiology sophomore, knows how to navigate UF’s version of the Panama Canal, which has faced a construction site closure since November 2023.
“When you're entering a walkway, you cannot see who's coming… you can easily get hit,” Estimable said. “I think it's very unsafe.”
Construction is a constant fixture on UF’s campus. UF Planning, Design and Construction lists 10 active projects on its website, with 23 more in the planning and design phases.
Construction projects on the Reitz Union North Lawn and Inner Road from Newell Drive to 13th Street have been in progress since Nov. 6, 2023. The Reitz Union North Lawn and Inner Road project, which is one project divided into three parts, is supposed to be completed by February 2025, according to the planning website.
However, a project schedule and tracker released on Aug. 28 shows that the project will not be completed until Aug. 5, 2025. This is corroborated by the owner-contractor agreement made between the UF Board of Trustees and Austin Commercial L.P., the project’s contractor.
On the same contract, the agreed-upon budget for all three projects is about $30 million. An expense tracker for the three projects shows the total expenses have been estimated to be about $6 million higher, according to public records requests.
In the meantime, students must participate in this daily exercise in detours, with some pedestrian walkways, bike lanes and scooter paths often fenced off.
Mira Patel, an 18-year-old UF finance freshman, said the construction near Broward Hall took her by surprise when she moved to Gainesville in August.
“It was just kind of confusing because I didn’t really know what it was about or what they were building,” she said. “It was also really loud. So that was definitely a bit of an adjustment.”
The North Lawn is only one of the heavily trafficked areas of campus marred by construction. The architecture building has followed a similar timeline to the North Lawn, with its remodeling and renovation beginning in October 2023 and scheduled to finish in April 2025.
Rachel Warren, a 21-year-old UF psychology and religion senior, has been at the university long enough to see the revolving door of construction projects across campus.
“It’s always been there, and it’s moving around a lot,” she said. “It’s a little bit irritating to run into new construction every now and then, but I also understand why it has to happen.”
Warren said the North Lawn and the architecture building construction sites, which closed a part of the Stadium Road sidewalk, have become eyesores for many students.
“I guess it is busy and ugly, but ultimately, I do understand why they do it,” she said. “That’s unfortunately probably an inevitable part of developing a university”
Nick Kozensky, a 21-year-old UF physics and math senior, said the pace of each construction project spurs frustration.
Kozensky said projects on Museum Road and in front of the chemistry building particularly bothered him because it got in the way of his commutes through campus. He mentioned projects on Stadium Road that were expected to be completed midway through the Summer semester were finished right before Fall classes began.
“It’s slow,” Kozensky said. “Too slow. They always have contractors, and they always have a project, but they never stick to the timeframe. They’re always over time.”
Kozensky, like Estimable on his scooter, has had run-ins while navigating the pathway from the Reitz Union to the Hub. As a student on his bike, trying to get to Marston or Chick-fil-A, he said he nearly runs someone over every time he goes through the ungenerous sidewalk.
UF did not comment in time for publication.
Contact Vera Lucia Pappaterra at vpappaterra@alligator.org. Follow her on X @veralupap.
