The Coates Esplanade, the open space near Coates Student Center on upper campus, is officially opening on February 14 after Trinity closed it during the fall semester. The changes include new sidewalks, updated planters and modern landscaping.
The construction surrounded the Esplanade with black fencing, which created a barrier to student movement. Many students are looking forward to moving more freely and seeing the improved Esplanade.
Grace Keller, sophomore theater and English double-major, expressed frustration with the length of the project and how it hindered accessibility on upper campus. Keller explained that she wished the project had been completed during the summer when it would not have affected students.
“I really feel like it didn’t change anything, and it just shut down a very vital part of campus for an entire semester,” Keller said. “There’s no reason, no reason that it needed to take six months.”
Rob Patrick, project manager at Trinity Facilities Services, spoke about the improvements. He explained several reasons for improving the Esplanade, including completing a fire lane, replacing aging infrastructure and improving accessibility.
“You had an old structure or set of structures where you had hardscape, sidewalk, landscaping, trees and planters and things that were just getting into disrepair. They were just old and needed to be replaced and renewed,” Patrick said. “You know, the campus is constantly renewing itself. So it’s just time for that space to be updated.”
Facilities originally scheduled the reopening in January, but they pushed it back due to a miscalculated pipe location and a need for inspections. As the Esplanade has not been renovated for quite a few years, the construction team had many hoops to jump through, including pipes placed in unexpected areas. Patrick discussed some of the challenges.
“We had hoped to be done in January, but that area has a ton of utility work under the surf, and that was part of the challenge of the project to begin with. Some of that infrastructure is as old as Coates Student Center and wasn’t known about,” Patrick said. “You have to kind of adjust on the fly. And we had one or two areas where it didn’t work out as smoothly as we had hoped, so we had to stop and rework the design a tad. We ended up finishing a few weeks later than anticipated. But overall, not bad considering the amount of difficulties we had to overcome.”
The project particularly impacted Lila Juenger, first-year biology major, due to its location near the first-year dorms. She expressed a desire for greater clarity on project deadlines and project scope in the future. As the project began before the fall 2024 semester, Juenger explained that, as a first-year, knowing how to avoid construction and get to class was difficult.
“I heard it was going to be done in September, and it was not. So I would have just been a little more explicit about it and maybe found a way to make a more accessible path,” Juenger said. “It would feel like such a trek just to get up and down campus if you have to do it multiple times a day if you live down in lower. It’s less annoying when it’s less hot, but at the beginning of the year when you’re first getting to campus and you’re first trying to find your way around and half the stuff is blocked off, it was a little bit confusing.”
However, Juenger also expressed her excitement about the new improvements. She said she looks forward to the space being open and getting to see the changes.
“It already looks nice from what I’ve seen,” Juenger said. “I’ll be excited.”
*This article was updated on Feb. 17 to correct the spelling of Lila Juenger’s last name.
