Warmer weather not only means fluffy white clouds and bright green grass, but it also means construction.

Iowa State University is experiencing some major construction projects this year, and many of those projects are currently underway.

One project that the city of Ames is working on right now is the street reconstruction project, said Justin Clausen construction supervisor for the city of Ames.

The construction, “started on Lincoln way up to basically West or Union, right now this is the first phase of it,” Clausen said.

The projects are part of the cities street improvement, capital improvement projects. Which is a full replacement of the street.

“Once we are done with this current phase we are in, for probably another three to three and half weeks, then we will continue North to Highland for four more phases of work,” Clausen said.

The projects are broken up to try and keep access to a lot of the properties including Iowa State.

“The project where I am seeing the most impact is the street reconstruction project,” Clausen said.

The problem is, the project’s duration runs longer than the typical summer break for Iowa State.

“We have to impact them at some point, and Iowa State felt pretty good that the least amount of impact would be during move out in the spring,” Clausen said.

Even with good intentions, the road construction is troublesome for a lot of the people that travel in and around that area.

Michael Cox, a freshman in mathematics said the construction is a real inconvenience for him.

“Because the end of the year is coming along, they could have waited another month or so then there wouldn’t have been very many people here, and that street wouldn’t be closed off,” Cox said.

Unfortunately, starting the construction now was the only option for the city of Ames.

“This project in particular is a little bit different then what’s typically handled with construction,” Clausen said.

“Around the University and campus town area, typically we wait until school is out of session and we get a lot of that work done during ISU’s summer session. Obviously there is a lot less pedestrian traffic and student traffic,” he said.

Beings that this particular project impacts so much of the University, and because a four to four and half month time frame is needed, Iowa State had a big involvement with the planning process, Clausen said.

“We discussed it closely with Iowa State, and their best recommendation was to start early. Usually moving out is a bit easier, people already know their way around town and around construction,” Clausen said.

Even though the construction on Sheldon Ave. is a pain in the rear, the University managed to take off some of the burden when it comes to traffic.

“The university did do a very good job of kind of rerouting the traffic. So you go through Friley and you can turn off and get back on Union drive,” Cox said.

“The route does take me a little bit out of the way, but it only adds maybe 30 seconds to a minute to my trip,” he said.

All in all, the construction may be inconveniencing everyone in that area, but it is understandable with the timeline the city of Ames has to work with, it is better to start the project early rather than finish it late.