K-State is constructing a circular drive and a World War II memorial in front of McCain Auditorium this semester.
    Jack Carlson, project manager for the facilities and planning department, said the university wanted to build a circular drive near McCain to have better handicapped accessibility for guests coming to shows there.
    “It’s been in the works for many, many years, and it’s just now come to fruition,” Carlson said.
    He said the circular drive will include benches, minimal parking, and hopefully a drop-off zone for shuttle and tour buses. Drop-off areas also have shelters, which will be especially helpful during bad weather,” Carlson said.
    The area will be well-lit for pedestrians. Carlson said the area near Danforth Chapel also has been redone and will include bike racks.
    The drive is partially open now to pedestrians, so students “don’t have to go all the way around the construction site,” Carlson said.
    He said the drive should be completed by Nov. 15.
    “Rains this summer caused some problems with the construction,” Carlson said.
    Mark Taussit, associate director of facilities and planning and a landscape architect, has been working on a design for the WWII memorial, which will be constructed in the middle of the drive.
    The idea for a WWII memorial was given to K-State by WWII veterans who were also K-State graduates. Taussit said more than 6,000 WWII soldiers were K-State faculty or students at the time. He said this idea for a memorial has been two or three years in the making. It is privately funded mostly by WWII veterans and their families.
    Taussit said the memorial design is simple. It consists of a complete circle made of limestone in the middle of the drive, with an 18-inch seat wall around it.
    The structure will be 70 feet in diameter, he said, and will hold a sculpture of a globe in the middle of it. Taussit said people will be able to see through the globe to view where both the Pacific and the Atlantic campaigns occurred during WWII.
    Flag poles will be included in the design, and sidewalks will lead to the inner part of the memorial.
    Construction should begin on Oct. 1, and should be finished around December, Taussit said. The sculpture will be commissioned once the area is finished. The artist will then decide how to build the sculpture and what materials to use.
    Lorne Render, director of the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, said he is in charge of hiring an artist to build the sculpture.
    “We will select some people who have good presentation and creative ideas,” he said.