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Stadium Parking Deck On Track to be Completed by the Start of the Fall Semester

By Nathan Ham

Despite record rainfall amounts throughout last fall and this spring, the 477-space parking deck in the Kidd Brewer Stadium lot is expected to be open and ready for the first day of class and the first home football game of the season.

Matt Dull, Appalachian State University’s Assistant Vice Chancellor for Finance and Operations, shared a construction update on July 8 about the parking deck and student-housing construction happening on the east side of campus. The parking deck is expected to be completed in mid-August. Classes at App State will begin on August 19.

According to the university, the new parking deck will still add approximately 250 add parking spots on the east side of campus, despite taking away some of the pavement parking spots in the Stadium Lot.

The most recent update said that construction crews are going to start working on the elevator installation.

“All the materials needed for that are on site, so they’re installing that elevator over the next three to four weeks or so,” Dull said.

Some other smaller items to finish up include finishing up the “low voltage system” which will include things such as wireless access points and provide connectivity to the campus-wide security system. There will also be some work with driveways in and out of the parking deck and concrete work for sidewalks over the next couple of weeks.

“Those are those final touches going into the parking deck now. It’s the hardscaping, landscaping, lighting, and elevators. Other things like barrier fences, so making sure that you’re creating safe spaces where people are walking and that there’s enough of a barrier between where they’re walking and where larger fall zones might be if you don’t have a barrier,” said Dull. “Those final barriers are going in now. So there’s a lot of those last touches, they’re all happening over the next month or so before that parking deck’s turned back over to the university.”

In addition to the parking deck in the stadium area, the two new student-housing buildings are starting to take shape.

“Building 200’s coming along really nicely. Most of that foundation work and load-bearing walls and all that’s done,” Dull said. The steel structure of the building is also coming out of the ground.”

The cinder block work for the stair towers and elevator towers are well underway as well.

Building 100 is the bigger of the two student-housing complexes. Construction for both is still on schedule according to Dull. Foundation work and walls are going up now for that building and it is expected that the steel structure will soon be going up after the foundation is completed.

Both resident halls are on schedule to be completed for the fall semester of 2020 and will add approximately 1,000 beds for incoming students.