DeKALB – A roundabout at the intersection of Normal Road and Lucinda Avenue is scheduled to be completed by August 2025.
The roundabout is the first phase of a two-phase plan to convert the area south of Lucinda Avenue to university grounds.
On Aug. 19, 2023, barricades were placed on Normal Road between Lucinda Avenue and Locust Drive, according to the Northern Star.
Once the roundabout is complete, plans to complete the second phase of the project will be finalized. Phase two of the project will include how the span of Normal Road between Lucinda Avenue and Locust Drive will be treated.
After the construction for the roundabout is finished, the barricades on Normal Road will be removed and there will be a grass buffer south of the roundabout, keeping the section of Normal Road from Lucinda Avenue to Founders Memorial Library inaccessible to vehicular traffic.
“It won’t even appear, as a driver, to have ever been a road,” said DeKalb City Engineer Zac Gill. “You could look well beyond and say there used to be a road there, but it will not appear to be part of a road network at the intersection itself.”
Gill said final plans for the conversion of Normal Road south of Lucinda Avenue are expected to be completed between the fall 2025 semester and spring 2026 semester.
The bid for the contract was won by Elliot and Wood, Inc., a local contractor. The project has a budget of $2 million.
“That intersection was deficient in many aspects, not only for the operational traffic, but very much so for pedestrians. Particularly for ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Gill said. “Anytime you touch a road, even if I were to come in there and resurface that to take out the bumps, that triggers automatically bringing everything up to code. We looked at what’s the best treatment and ultimately it would be a roundabout.”
Gill said a possible use for the area south of Lucinda is to turn it into a courtyard.
“As of now the very cursory conceptual is that it (the area south of Lucinda) would be similar to what is next to it on what used to be Carroll Avenue,” Gill said. “Nothing is finalized or anything but that’s the direction we’re thinking of going.”
