The estimated cost of the Lucinda Avenue repair was reduced from $550,000 to $440,000 by the Board of Trustees at a Thursday meeting.

The repairs will fix a 35-foot misalignment in the Lucinda Avenue extension connecting Lucinda Avenue and Recreation Drive. The $4.5 million extension completed Nov. 19 did not include correcting the misalignment.

An amendment, proposed by Trustee Timothy Struthers at a Board of Trustees meeting Thursday, capped the spending at $440,000.

The 10 percent cut to $440,000 was possible due to bidding with four different companies, said Alan Phillips, vice president of Administration and Finance.

“For the life of me, I can’t understand why it costs $550,000 [to repair this road],” Struthers said. “I would feel a whole lot better if that number were closer to $400,000.”

Trustee Robert Boey said NIU made a mistake not paving Recreation Drive in line with Lucinda Avenue when the Convocation Center was built in 2002, but Douglas Hall was not anticipated to be taken down when Recreation Drive was paved, so there was no need to align the two roads.

Thomas Wroblewski, director of Architectural and Engineering Services, said once the construction for the Lucinda Avenue extension started in April, the engineer heading the project acknowledged that the misalignment would be an issue after completing the initial survey work for the project.

The engineering firm managing the construction gave NIU the option of shifting the Lucinda Avenue extension toward Recreation Drive which would cut through Stevenson Towers South and create additional repairs to the residence hall, or finish the road with the misalignment.

Wroblewski said NIU decided to continue to pave the misaligned extension and not cut into the Stevenson Towers South because NIU wanted to use the $233,861 left over from the Federal Highway Administration grant to pay for the realignment project which would require approval from the Illinois Department of Transportation.

The Lucinda Avenue extension repair will be paid for with $233,861 in funds left over from a 2004 grant given to NIU by the Federal Highway Administration grant. NIU will pay the remaining balance with a 2010 series bond fund.

Wroblewski said the bidding will be a lengthy process and could take up to 15 months and construction could start in May 2017 and last until May 2018.

Trustee Marc Strauss was the only trustee to vote against the repairs citing the Feb. 18 Board of Trustees meeting when he said that he did not think this repair would be the best use of the university’s funds.

“[The Department of Transportation] funds, for instance, could be used for putting a roof on a residence hall, [to] take care of another capital item that is within the auxiliary enterprise [and/or] the structure of the university,” Strauss said. “There are many other uses for the money that are potentially possible.”