Construction crews have been working nonstop on South Wabash Avenue all semester in an effort to reconstruct the roadway. But Columbia administrators are working to ensure that the construction does not interfere with Manifest.

Caroline Caliguiri, operations manager of the Office of Facilities and Operations, wrote to the Chicago Department of Transportation requesting to have construction halted or slowed on May 15 for the student arts festival.

“The City has worked with us from day one of the Wabash Sidewalk Project to make sure that all of our events were taken care of,” said Caligiuri. “Unfortunately, this year, the green fencing will still be in place on Wabash Avenue during Manifest -it is unavoidable. “

Past festivals have had to deal with construction during student performances and exhibitions. Construction on Congress Parkway and Wabash Avenue was conducted during last year’s festival,and proved to be little to no problem.

“We’ve had to work around it before,” said Jennifer Friedrich, festival and events coordinator. “This year it is just a much larger scale and runs through our main street. The city planner has been helpful and communicative with us thus far, though.”

Last year during construction, the city allowed Columbia to display signs and posters for Manifest on the fences that were obstructing building views, Friedrich said.

“We will work with our contractor to have the work zone as neat as possible during the Manifest event and maximize the space for pedestrians on the existing sidewalks or temporary pathways,” said John Lukas, Wabash Avenue’s project manager. “The sidewalk work is in progress, however, I do not believe that we will have any of the new sidewalk in place by May 15. The festival committee said they were aware of the construction during their planning.”

Despite changes in exhibits and slight nuisances, the administration is not expecting the construction to be too detrimental to the festival.

“We have an urban campus and part of the city is constant construction,” Friedrich said. “We knew we were going to have to be creative and work around it.”

Kelly said he believes that festival-goers will hardly notice the crews, machinery and fences.

“I walk around campus every day; we all do,” Kelly said. “We’re pretty used to it, and it isn’t so bad.”