By Kerry Smith, Editor, St. Louis Construction News & Review Magazine
St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Companies is doing work to improve the busy Danforth Campus intersections of Forsyth & Skinker Boulevards and Forsyth Boulevard & Hoyt Drive to enhance safety for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.
The two intersections are major access points on the southeastern end of campus.
The multi-phase infrastructural projects, set to wrap up this fall, are part of the university’s overall $240 million Campus Next initiative, specifically the East End Transformation Project, the school’s largest capital project ever undertaken on the Danforth Campus. No detailed cost information was available for the intersection work.
At Forsyth & Skinker, a right-turn lane and new traffic signaling is being added for vehicles traveling east on Forsyth, McCarthy Project Director Ryan Moss said, along with safety upgrades to bicycle and pedestrian crosswalks.
At Forsyth & Hoyt, a traffic signal will be installed.
“At busy intersections like these, there are a number of stakeholders impacted by the sidewalk closures and lane drops,” said Moss, project director with McCarthy, construction manager on the intersection projects as well as for the overall East End Transformation effort. “Coordination between many entities was required to keep pedestrian and vehicular traffic moving while also completing the necessary work.”
Philadelphia-based KieranTimberlake, Alexandria-based Michael Vergason Landscape Architects, Ltd. and St. Louis-based civil engineering firm Cole are additional project partners.
Jane Kojima, director of communications for Facilities Planning & Management at Washington University in St. Louis, said construction work on both projects is on schedule for completion this fall.
“Enhanced visibility of these crosswalks, the marking of bikeways, decreased pedestrian crosswalk distances and the coordination of vehicular traffic flow and pedestrian movements are all part of what we’re doing at these Forsyth Boulevard intersections near the entrance to campus,” Kojima said. “We’re working closely with the cities of St. Louis and Clayton, as well as in consultation with the city of St. Louis’ Department of Parks, Recreation, and Forestry and Forest Park Forever.”
