The Crew House project is long overdue. However, it is very poor timing by the university to build a new Crew House at the start of the school year because it is located so close to the Lakeshore dorms.
The entire project is schedule to take approximately a year to complete. Therefore, it seems that no matter when the project was started, it would affect students for a full academic year. Yet, there were actions the university could have taken to make construction on the new Crew House more palatable for students.
For starters, to do this construction now, when tuition is rising and the university is cutting services, is an insult. Every day the residents of the Lakeshore dorms see their skyrocketing tuition payments going toward a project that pollutes the air they breathe and creates loud noise outside their windows.
Demolition of the old Crew House started on Sept. 2, the same day classes started. Since tearing down the old Crew House is the part of the project that puts the most dust in the air, it would have been more practical to start demolition prior to student move-in.
Further, over the summer there were virtually no residents in the Lakeshore dorms. The few people staying in the dorms were part of summer programs and were gone for most of the day.
David Ewanowski, the project's lead architect, says the construction crew does everything it can to accommodate students. Yet the concessions those in charge of the project are making to Lakeshore residents are, at best, token gestures.
For example, construction begins at 10 a.m. Considering the average UW freshman will sleep until 4 p.m. if given the chance, this is an annoyance. The construction makes it nearly impossible to do anything at all, from studying to playing Frisbee.
The university should have thought this through more carefully from the beginning. The Crew team did not have the top-notch facility it deserved in the old Crew House. However, the fact construction on a new one coincides perfectly with the school year, when we are facing a severe budget crunch in the UW system, is not fair to any students and especially the Lakeshore residents.
In addition, the university does not seem to have seriously explored any options that would simplify the lives of students. For example, the university could have added on to the old Crew House or built the new facility at a location where it would not have as adverse an effect on students.
The Crew House project has already started, so there are few options other than to finish it. But the university needs to take into account the needs of all students before embarking on similar projects in the future.
