New walking mall to offer safer access

This time next fall students won’t be tripping over the deteriorating cement sidewalk in front of McGill Hall.

Instead, the ideal route from the University Center to McGill will be through the Memorial Grove’s new $100,000 walking mall.

“It is too narrow and a really dangerous sidewalk with all the bike and pedestrian traffic,” said Kevin Krebsbach, associate director of planning and construction at UM Facility services.

Instead of fixing the sidewalk, the Committee on Campus Facilities – which has to approve all campus construction projects before work starts – decided the University will replace it with grass and put in a 15-foot wide sidewalk through Memorial Grove.

“The current sidewalk outside McGill is the worst sidewalk on campus,” said Bob Duringer, Vice President for Administration and Finance. “Someone is always tripping or falling. So, we’ll get that (sidewalk) out.”

The funding for the walking mall is part of the $110 million spent on many similar improvement projects around campus, including the addition of Don Anderson Hall and the Interdisciplinary Science Building, expansions to Washington-Grizzly Stadium, the education building, Skaggs, and the School of Law building.

The walking mall “will serve everybody a heck of a lot more,” Duringer said.

The new sidewalk will “be a big improvement for people in wheelchairs and all disabilities, (accommodate) four times the width of pedestrian traffic, make it easier to keep the walk plowed and give better access to all the new buildings,” he added.

The walking mall will be completed in two phases, one this coming summer, and the other after construction is finished on the education and law buildings.
The construction on the walking mall will probably wrap up 18 to 20 months from now, Duringer said.

But the first part of the project will be completed by next fall, Duringer and Krebsbach noted.

Work on phase one, which includes the segment of sidewalk that will start at the base of the three flagpoles and extend to the north side of McGill Hall, will take longer than most sidewalk installations because of the tree roots along Memorial Grove, Krebsbach said.

“The trees are coming up on 100 years old now so we have to take care of them,” Duringer said.

The second phase includes the segment that will continue past the PAR/TV building to the parking lot outside the Adams Center.

The walking mall will have arterials extending from the main sidewalk to the buildings, and the World War I Memorial plaques below the trees will be removed, cleaned and remounted.

amy.faxon@umontana.edu