Pandemic both blessing curse for projects

Nan Dickson/Telegram file Temple High School band members perform during a ceremony dedicating the new Wildcat statue in the center of the North 31st Street roundabout outside the entrance to the campus.

BY SHANE MONACO

TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

While the area has continued to grow over the past year, restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic have been both a boon and a burden to that growth.

Projects throughout Temple and the surrounding county were impacted by the pandemic in different ways. For some work, the lack of traffic meant that construction could go quicker, while on other projects finding ways around restrictions took additional time.

One example of work being hindered during the pandemic came from the county, which saw delays in its roadwork due to social distancing measures.

County Engineer Bryan Neaves told county commissioners in January that figuring out how to repave roads while still staying safe slowed down work crews. The slowing of this work lead to roads in county Precinct 4 not receiving their annual maintenance.

Work on repaving roads is usually done between the middle of April and the end of September.

“We had a problem figuring out how to assemble a crew and function with the requirements of the distancing, masks, getting in the pickups and having enough pickups to function,” Neaves said. “We lost a month in there.”

The county crews plan to catch up on the work this year, completing the work needed this year and the work not finished last year.

In Temple some other construction projects saw delays such as the rehabilitation of the Hawn Hotel, 114 E. Central Ave.

Construction to renovate the historic hotel, as well as the nearby Arcadia Theater and Professional Building, had been expected to begin sometime in the fall of 2020. Work on the three buildings still was not underway by the end of May 2021.

While some projects have slowed down, others saw quicker construction as places being closed gave more room to construction crews.

Kent Boyd, assistant superintendent for Temple Independent School District, said the lack of students on campuses allowed the district to start and complete two projects earlier than expected. He said the district also was able to expand the scope of another project during this time.

Boyd said the project to build a roundabout in front of Temple High School was able to start two months earlier than planned due to the pandemic and reach completion three months ahead of schedule. Additionally, a project to renovate Meridith-Dunbar Early Childhood Academy began early and is expected to be completed two months earlier than originally estimated.

The shutdown also allowed the district to expand the scope of the fine arts renovation project at the high school to include the student center.

“We knew that work would take about five months to complete in the student center and, under normal circumstances, would be very difficult to accomplish because that facility does not really shut down except for one month every summer,” Boyd said. “Therefore, with the building vacant from the beginning of the pandemic through late August, we had ample time to design and complete the project.”

The only problems the school district experienced were delays in construction materials as well as their increased prices, though Boyd said the expedited projects outweighed the few challenges faced.

smonaco@tdtnews.com