The mourning period for Toomer's Corner is over.
The Auburn University Board of Trustees convened on the school's Montgomery campus Friday to approve funding for the removal of the contaminated soil beneath the corner and remodeling of the brick area behind the historic gates to the school.
"Once the trees were determined that they needed to be removed, we went through a number of different committees and processes to figure out what to do with the university's corner in [downtown] Auburn," said Vice President of Facilities Management Dan King. "The trees were cut down last April and at the A day celebration those plans were made public."
The board approved $900,000 from the University's general fund to complete the makeover in two phases across the next two years.
The first phases comprise all of what King calls the "hardscape" work: removing the bricks and pavers on the existing corner, digging, cleaning out and safely removing the contaminated soil and completing the construction changes to the new area.
The most eye-catching new feature of the campus corner of College and Magnolia will be the circular seat wall set behind the existing gates and path to Samford Hall.
"Right now, Toomer's Corner is one of our most iconic spaces on campus, but if you want to go hang out there, you can't," King said. "There's no place to sit, there's not good lighting, you're right at the corner where traffic is coming back and forth. The circular seat wall is set a bit back [from the street] and I believe that it'll become a nice addition to the campus and create another little gathering place that's people friendly."
Though the construction shouldn't cause problems for traffic at the intersection of College and Magnolia, King said it will drastically affect pedestrian traffic between campus and the rest of downtown Auburn, which is why development won't begin until after graduation in May.
King estimates the "hardscape" work will be completed in time for the start of the 2014 football season, but the second phase of the project, planting the new trees, will come after.
The trees will take a little longer because we have have to identify the exact candidates, go through a process called "root pruning" which causes the root ball to get bigger and denser and increases the likelihood of the tree being replanted successfully," King said. "Everything before transplanting the trees constitutes phase one."
Despite being extremely poisonous to plants, Spike 80DF, the herbicide used, is non-toxic to humans and there's no health concerns posed to the Auburn community before it's removal, King said.
A redesigned, tree-lined walkway leading to Samford Hall will be the last completed component to phase two in the summer before the 2015 football season.
"I can probably say with a good deal of certainty that the day we plant trees we will certainly have an event that brings out a lot of people," said Director of University Communications Mike Clardy. "Hopefully that's around this time next year."
In designing the new corner, the university reached out to various groups for ideas last year, SGA president Harrison Mills said.
"[2013 President] Owen Harris, his administration was heavily involved with facilities in the development of that master plan," said Mills. "Throughout the development they had a lot of student and faculty input in facilitating the design concept, which is really cool."
The board of trustees also approved the construction of a graduate college of business building and a Recycling and Service support facility on campus and an Aviation school located next to the Auburn airport.
A $750,000 budget was approved for the graduate college of business building in addition to individual contract firms for the projects.
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