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Construction continues around Uptown Oxford

Hannah Stein, Senior Staff Writer

Many students who moved in this week may have noticed there was a lot of work being done to the streets of Oxford with more construction ready to begin.

The City of Oxford laid down new bricks on High Street over the summer.

"The whole zero block of East High Street was completely dismantled, new base put back down and bricks laid back down," Alan Kyger, economic ddevelopment director for the City of Oxford said. "That went from basically two days after [the students] left in spring and was done by near the end of June."

This is the third section of High Street that has been redone, according to Kyger. Each section of High Street has been re-bricked every other year so this is the last of the brick section and series of construction that was planned several years back.

"The next question will be whether the city would then like to explore taking out the asphalt on the last section of the uptown district of high street and converting it back to brick," Kyger said.

He said this decision will be debated later this year.

Some students are not happy with the idea of more construction around Oxford, especially on High Street, even if it does mean using brick.

"As cute as that would be, the upkeep on brick roads tends to be more expensive if not laid properly," junior Emma Foltz said. "Also, that would lengthen the construction time considerably and I'd like for the construction to just be done."

There is also work being done to make South Poplar Street a through-street and connect it to Central Avenue; Kyger said the city hopes to have this done by the winter.

Private contractors of apartments across from the Recreation Center will also build more duplexes along South Poplar Street, a project that was approved in 2009, Kyger said.

"The plan was to do that in three phases," he said. "The first section of duplexes were built and I believe their plan is to do phase two and three together."

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Another possible upcoming construction plan is for New Village Communities from Columbus to build a mixed development of residential living and commercial businesses in the former site of Wal-Mart on South Locust Street, Kyger said.

"This was approved around 2007 or 2008 and been sitting idle because of the recession. [This year they] might want to move forward with that," Kyger said.

Other students, like junior Katelynn Dreeze, think of construction in an entirely different fashion. Dreexe said she thinks even though construction is annoying, in times where the economy is not doing well, the jobs it provides is something that should be appreciated.

Although there will be more construction uptown and around Oxford, students can count on less as the fall semester ends.