Bob Yoos doesn’t want to see what’s in the garages of Lawrence residents these days.

Yoos, the man who oversees the city’s trash crews, suspects there’s a lot of people with large piles of glass bottles, newspapers, cardboard and other recyclable items since Wal-Mart’s heavily used recycling center was closed in July.

“There are some people sitting on a lot of stuff, I think,” Yoos said.

The popular center closed in July as part of Wal-Mart’s project to add a grocery department to its store at 33rd and Iowa streets. The recycling center was supposed to reopen Sept. 27, but construction delays have pushed the opening date to the end of October or early November, Wal-Mart officials said Thursday.

People looking for somebody to blame their messy garages on – it appears – should look to Mother Nature. Ruth Becker, the store’s green coordinator and director of community involvement, said the recycling center’s opening has been delayed by work on a new portion of 34th Street. The street provides the main access to the center, which will be south of the Wal-Mart store.

“We’re just waiting on that to get done,” Becker said.

The Wal-Mart recycling center at the south end of the the main building on Iowa Street is currently under construction. It was scheduled to reopen Sept. 27, but heavy rains in August have delayed completion.

Becker said heavy rains in August were a likely culprit for the delays. The area received nearly 10 inches of rain in August, compared with average rainfalls of about 4 inches.

Wal-Mart’s store managers referred questions about the road project to corporate headquarters, and calls to the company’s offices in Arkansas weren’t returned.

But Becker said community members should rest assured that the recycling center will reopen.

“Wal-Mart doesn’t walk away from something once they start it,” Becker said. “We think of this as being a continuation of being a good neighbor. We are really trying to get it done and open by the end of the month.”

Becker does have some worries members of the community might be falling out of the recycling habit while the center is closed.

“We’re hoping that once the center is done and it looks all nice and new that people will want to come out and look at it,” Becker said. “We hope that will get them back in the mood to recycle.”

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Yoos said he also had been concerned that people would quit recycling after the center closed. But he said his trash crews haven’t seen evidence of that yet. Yoos said people appear to be taking newspapers and cardboard to city recycling bins throughout the community.

“We’ve noticed that the amount being collected in those boxes has essentially doubled,” Yoos said. “At some locations, we have went from picking up every three days to picking up every day.”

Yoos said private curbside recycling services and other for-profit recycling centers in town have told him that their collections also have increased since the center closed.

Becker said the center usually recycles about 3 million pounds of items each year. She said when the center reopens it will accept all the same items it previously accepted. That includes newspaper, corrugated cardboard, office paper, metal cans, aluminum cans, phone books, various plastics, magazines and glass.

The center has been staffed by Community Living Opportunities, a nonprofit organization that provides services to people with developmental disabilities. Becker said CLO would continue to staff the new center.