Ground has officially been broken on the highly anticipated commuter lot. The new Seventh Avenue Parking Lot will provide much needed relief for commuter students struggling to find parking spaces near campus. The Seventh Avenue Lot will be open and usable as a graveled lot in Nov. 2023. This lot plans to have 340 parking spaces available for students who commute to campus, and is planned to be completely finished in May of 2024.
The University has hired Bacco Construction as a contractor to oversee the project. The first phase of this crucial construction project began mid-September with tree removal south of Seventh Avenue. This lot will have an entrance from Seventh Avenue and will connect to the walking path leading to lots 21 and 26.
Along with the improvements to parking for the University, there was also an opportunity to help with water management. The neighborhood around this area has been facing excessive water runoff, and the University saw an opportunity to help with this issue. The plans for the new lot include detention basins to retain water running down the hill and feed the water into the municipal storm system. This plan should help the drainage in the area as well as mitigate the issues of the surrounding communities, which include excessive water damage and settling.
While the new construction aims to improve the surrounding area’s water management, many trees were required to be removed for this project. In response to the removal of such a great amount of trees, the College of Forest Resources and Environment Science at Michigan Tech conducted a site review of the future parking lot. They determined that no trees were considered old-growth, and some trees were even invasive. The harvested trees will be used for lumber, pulp, or be chipped and shipped to L’Anse Warden Biomass power plant to generate power.
The final step needed for this project is microblasting, which is used to remove rock from the construction site. The subcontractor heading the microblasting, SX Blasting, reports that there will be blasting no more than two times per day between 5 and 7 p.m. to minimize noise and ground vibration during the process.
For more information on this project or other construction projects, visit the Active Construction Projects page on the Michigan Tech facilities website.
