ELEVATOR WORK IS PROCEEDING AT UNIVERSITY

The long-awaited construction of elevators in three academic buildings at Southeast Missouri State University is expected to begin next week.

The work will be done by Penzel Construction Co. of Jackson, which submitted a low bid of $416,000.

Bill Moon, physical plant director at Southeast, said Tuesday that the $416,000 figure is for actual construction work. Costs of design work and other expenses incurred in the planning stages will bring the total project cost to almost $500,000, he said.

The project, funded by a state appropriation, involves construction of elevators in the Grauel, Art, and Social Sciences buildings.

"We will be working in all three buildings simultaneously," said Moon.

The entire project, he said, should be completed within four to six months.

All efforts will be made to avoid disrupting classes as much as possible, he said. To that end, some construction work will be done at night or when classes are not in session, he said. But he said some classes will have to be relocated at times because of the construction.

Moon said: "I don't believe that it will cause as much disruption as many people think. It certainly is going to be inconvenient, but that is different from preventing a class from being held or having to empty an entire building or that type of thing."

Moon said the university has asked the contractor to employ construction techniques designed to keep noise and dust to a minimum.

"We've even dictated that the contractor use hydraulic saws when they are cutting concrete because they are smoother and don't make as much noise," he said.

Initially, the contractor will be erecting construction walls and dust walls to fence off the areas and keep dust and debris confined as much as possible, he said.

The contractor "will also start digging behind the Art Building because that particular elevator requires a new tower," said Moon.

An elevator tower will be added to the north side of the Art Building. In the Grauel Building the elevator will be built within a northern section of the structure. In the Social Science Building the elevator will be built within a western section of the existing structure.

"All of these entail more than just the elevators," said Moon.

For example, at Grauel, interior ramps and some wheelchair seating will be installed to make Rose Theatre more accessible to handicapped people.

At the Art Building, access ramps will be installed to allow handicapped persons to reach the elevator tower from the outside, as well as enter the lower level of the building, he said.

Once the elevators are in place, the university will look to make interior offices and classrooms in those buildings more accessible to the handicapped, Moon said.

The three buildings are the only academic buildings without elevators.

Dempster Hall of Business has a residential-type elevator dating back to when the building housed apartments. "We still need a regular elevator in Dempster," said Moon. "We have requested that from the state."

The current elevator project has been in the planning stages for several years.

"It's been a long drawn-out kind of project," said Moon, "most of which we, the university, didn't have the control over. We had to wait for the legislature to appropriate the money and we got into the wage dispute."

It took several years to secure the needed state funding. Then, when funding was finally approved earlier this year, the project hit a snag due to a dispute over the prevailing wage rates for certain construction crafts.

The dispute, he said, delayed the project for about six weeks.

Southeast is under a federal mandate from the Office of Civil Rights to meet handicapped accessibility requirements. The university is faced with a 1995 deadline to comply with provisions of the new federal disabilities act.

"We were in a situation," said Moon, "where we couldn't comply with the civil rights lawsuits (and) we couldn't comply with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) if it had been pressed."

This project, he said, should help resolve the situation.

Efforts already have been made to improve handicapped accessibility at Southeast, outside of the elevator project, said Moon. But the university is now asking the state legislature for more than $1 million to make all of its programs accessible to the handicapped.