Editor's note: In honor of the university's centennial year, The Daily News is counting down 100 days to the university's celebration Sept. 6 with 100 of Ball State's most famous traditions and figures. Check back each day to read about Cardinal history.
The road that runs through the heart of Ball State’s campus did not become a road fit for foot traffic until 2005.
The road started as a “country-like road” with one yellow stripe down the middle, causing concern for safety as Ball State grew and traffic increased, according to a Daily News article from May 16, 2005.
To improve on-campus safety, decrease the amount of flooding and potholes and transform the road into a “campus access road,” the university began work on a three-part project on McKinley Avenue in May 2005.
The first phase included a new base, new subsurface drainage, five layers of asphalt, a line around the west side of Shafer Tower, a concrete median with trees and plants, brick sidewalks, brighter sidewalk lighting and new traffic signal equipment.
The median was designed to give pedestrians a “safe haven and additional time to think about their next move.” Additionally, brick crosswalks that span across the road were designed to alert drivers about the possibility of pedestrian crossing.
Because the road often flooded before the construction, the entire base of the road — which was composed of different soils and had no subsurface drainage — had to be replaced.
“It’s actually a bad base [and] bad sub-drainage that causes your problems with the roads and the cracking and so forth,” said Jim Lowe, associate vice president for facilities planning and management, in a previous Daily News article. “You can’t get the water away, it freezes underneath, it pops up and creates a crack, and it just propagates from there.”
The new pipes that were installed under McKinley should be able to handle a “quick two-inch rainfall,” said Brian Crume, who managed E and B Paving while the work was being done, in a previous Daily News article.
Phase one was completed Aug. 13, 2005, and the second phase of construction began in spring 2006.
Throughout that summer, students, faculty and community members pitched in for the second phase by helping with landscaping, which was completed by the following fall semester.
Finally, in 2007, more work was done to improve the drainage system on the road, wrapping up the $10 million federally-funded project.
This project was not the last update McKinley Avenue would see, however. A new project began May 7, 2018, that was completed Aug. 10 and created a traffic circle near the northern entrance of the road.
The circle requires motorists to slow down before driving through campus, and should provide the opportunity needed for drivers to slow down to the on-campus speed limit of 20 mph, said Lowe in a Daily News article.
With this phase of the current Campus Master Plan complete, McKinley Avenue will once again be open for community use — from walking across or driving through campus to holding events such as the Homecoming Parade — during the upcoming semesters.
Read more centennial content here.
Contact Brooke Kemp with comments at bmkemp@bsu.edu or on Twitter @brookemkemp.
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