SUSIE LEMONT/Arizona Daily Wildcat Two students walk by the future home of the Alumni Plaza. Construction of the plaza is currently behind schedule because of changes made to include the cactus garden as well as slow fundraising.

Construction of the Alumni Plaza has been pushed back a year due to shortage of donations for construction and the time it took to redesign the area south of the Administration building to include the oft-discussed cactus garden.

Construction on the $2.5 million plaza is now set to start in December 2003, rather than this December, said Mark Novak, landscape architect for campus and facilities planning.

Novak, whose department is managing the project for the UA and the Alumni Association, said the August decision to delay the plaza was intended to give the association more time to raise funds to build the plaza.

"The delay is simply to give us time to work through the design process," said Kay Brown, who is on the association's board of directors.

"The design wasn't what we wanted and we needed more time after incorporating the cactus garden," said Jay Rochlin, associate director of the association. "Any University of Arizona project must have 85 percent of the funding in the bank and we didn't have that yet."

There was an outcry from members of the UA community when the association made its original proposal to move the Joseph Wood Krutch cactus garden to its original location near Old Main last year to make room for the plaza.

Pressure from members of the Tucson and the UA community to keep the garden in place was intense. The best-attended student government meeting of the year became the forum for debate over the fate of the Krutch garden.

President Peter Likins said his e-mail overflowed with messages about the garden. And at one Student Advisory Council meeting, Alumni Association President Sandy Ruhl was asked about boojum trees, and she said not even to utter the word "boojum."

Eventually, the garden was incorporated into the new design of the plaza.

The highlights of the plaza design are four fountains, an "ellipsed" heritage hill that can serve as seating for performances, the Alumni Terrace near the Administration building. And "certainly the cactus garden is a central focus," Brown said.

"It will create a sense of community and a sense of belonging," Brown said. "Every University of Arizona student is a part of what we call the Arizona Experience. The Alumni Plaza is intended to celebrate it."

Rochlin doesn't believe that negative attention the plaza received hurt fundraising efforts.

"I don't think it affected it at all. If anything, it gave more attention, and generally people are more pleased with the result," Rochlin said. "I myself haven't heard of any donors that pulled money because of the negative attention."

The delay is good news for UA Mall purists, as the construction would have shut down the center of the Mall near the Student Union Memorial Center, the Administration building, the Modern Languages building and the Koffler building for the entire spring semester and summer sessions.