Construction for Kinghorn Hall is not quite over, with crews working on finishing parts of the interior of the building, as well as the landscaping around it.
Although crews are still working inside the building to finish these items, workers are making sure they do not interfere with students' activities, and the areas blocked from students are small, Alan Hargrave, director of Housing and Residence Life, said.
"The building is so big and there are so many places for students to gather, I don't know that a 10-foot area that is blocked off temporarily is really impacting their enjoyment of the building too much," he said.
Some areas of Kinghorn that Ball State crews are still working on are:
• On the first floor, crews are finishing carpentry on the staircase and, as of Friday evening, they were installing a hand bar.
• Lines in the shower heads had temporary plastic fittings that workers are exchanging for brass fittings.
• There is some finishing to be done on the wooden columns throughout the hall.
Hargrave said he is not sure when all finishing works will be completed, but he expects everything to be done with quality.
"Construction is a very messy business and it's important for architects to have very specific criteria that indicate what is acceptable and isn't," he said. "And since we are using student money to build these buildings, we want to make sure we get what we paid for. So, if something's not right, then they have to go back and correct it."
Kevin Kenyon, associate vice president of facilities planning and management, said the schedule for construction on the building had changed due to the weather, and crews had to work on a tight deadline before students came back to campus.
He said completion work is common when a building is built or renovated.
"Every building has a punch list," he said. "When we make a building, that building is going to be one of a kind. It's not like cars that you can make many of the same model. For buildings, we need to coordinate sometimes hundreds of people that are working on different areas."
Kenyon said most maintenance and construction on residence halls is done in the summer, such as the renovation of the fire alarm and sprinkler systems in Studebaker West this summer.
"If we can do it over the summer, we'll schedule it for then," he said. "We'll do some work while buildings are occupied, but those are small things. We do some maintenance, like the replacement of some bricks on sidewalks, but generally we don't if we know we would interfere with students."
Kenyon said they expect to work on the renovation of other residence hall buildings. Stu East is currently under renovation, but other buildings on the long-term list for construction include Johnson Halls A and B, Elliott Hall and LaFollette Complex. There are no scheduled dates for these buildings.
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