State universities in Kansas have managed the recent budget cuts relatively well, but the Kansas Board of Regents warns of the overall effects the cuts could have. Regents warn cuts could have negative effects on enrollment and graduation numbers.

Goodbye, old traffic booth. Hello, $600,000 water-spraying welcome.

Kansas University crews are preparing to construct the Docking Family Gateway, a grand new entrance to central campus near the intersection of 13th Street and Oread Avenue.

“It’s much more of a dramatic and fitting entrance to the university,” KU spokesman Todd Cohen said.

The new entrance will feature a 16-foot spire of brick and precast stone with the inscriptions “The University of Kansas” and “Docking Family Gateway,” plus the KU logo engraved in stone and a fountain. The street surrounding the area will be covered in colored concrete in different patterns.

Construction begins Monday on the Docking Family Gateway, which will feature a 16-foot spire and a fountain with vertical jets of water.

“It’ll be an aesthetically immense improvement to that corner there,” University Architect Warren Corman said. “The traffic booth is not pretty. It’s just an old wooden booth there.”

Crews are expected to begin tearing down the existing traffic booth today. A temporary booth has been set up near 14th Street and Jayhawk Boulevard.

Starting Monday, northbound traffic on Jayhawk Boulevard, excluding buses, must take a detour to the east at 14th Street. Southbound traffic will remain open.

Construction of the gateway is set to begin Monday and is expected to be completed by start of the fall semester.

The project is funded primarily by a $500,000 contribution from KU alumnus Jill Docking and her husband, former Kansas Lt. Gov. Tom Docking.

Cohen said the gateway would be a bookend to Chi Omega fountain on the opposite end of Jayhawk Boulevard.

But the intersection isn’t the only entrance that could use an upgrade.

Corman said the entrances at 11th and Mississippi streets, 19th Street and Naismith Drive, and 17th and Indiana streets still need to be upgraded.