Pending permit approval, construction on Phase 1 of the University Lakes project is set to begin, as the nearly yearlong advance work stage reaches its final steps.
With the exception of landscaping the small island used for initial research and dredging work off of Stanford Avenue, the permit is the final hurdle to beginning Phase 1 construction, said University Lakes project manager Mark Goodson.
“The most exciting thing in my mind is that we’re to the point now where it’s going to happen,” he said. “We’ve got the contracting in place, we have the funding for Phase 1 in place and we’re really just waiting on the permit from the Corps of Engineers. Construction will start as soon as we find out that that’s approved.”
Advance work on the project began last summer as workers battled algae and sediment to test different ways to dredge the lakes.
“Part of what we still have left to do that we’re accomplishing in this first phase of work is to cap and landscape the top of the island that was built,” Goodson said. “If you’ve seen it, it very much still looks unfinished, so that part has yet to be done.”
Progress appears to have stalled in the University Lakes Restoration Project, seen along E. Lakeshore Drive near Stanford Avenue, Wednesday, October 5, 2022, in Baton Rouge, La.
Goodson, who manages the project through the CSRS engineering firm, said the advance work helped the project team study the island, since it was constructed to see how the material performs under lake conditions.
“Understanding those settlement curves was critical to being able to design the project,” he said. “So the project itself, the flood risk reduction components of the project and the dredging, primarily, is designed for all of the lakes.”
Among other planned elements, Phase 1 of the project will include dredging City Park Lake and Erie Lake for improvements and expanding the LSU Bird Sanctuary on Lakeshore Drive.
“As this material gets dredged from the bottom of the lakes, we established early on going back to the master plan in 2016 that it’s cost-prohibitive and nearly impossible to haul that material somewhere else and dispose of it,” he said. “We’ve got to find ways to beneficially reuse it on site, and the bird sanctuary makes a lot of sense.”
According to the University Lakes project team, early Phase 1 work is expected to cost $17,874,132 as workers dredge, place and stabilize the two lakes.
Improvements to May Street — a new bridge, road realignment, bike paths, seeding, lighting — have also been planned for Phase 1 construction but are still under design. Interim landscape improvements and construction costs are estimated to bring the total Phase 1 cost to $32 million.
“The dredging component, which is dredging City Park Lake and Lake Erie, moving a good bit of that material to the bird sanctuary and also improving the weir at Stanford Avenue will get done in approximately 12 months,” Goodson said. “The May Street work, that’s still under design and that will take a little bit longer to complete, but I don’t know the exact timeline yet.”
The project has more than $41 million in available funding for Phase 1 as of February 2023, with $5 million each from East Baton Rouge City-Parish, BREC and LADOTD.
Another $26 million in funds will be provided from the state, $16 million through capital outlay funds and $10 million from the Office of Community Development.
While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer permit “could take years” to come in, according to Goodson, he said he is confident that the project team will receive a response in the next few months.
“At this point, we’ve provided all the additional information that the Corps has requested from us,” he said. “It’ll be months, not years, before we get it.”
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