As he said himself, Purdue President Mitch Daniels isn’t that interested in ground-breaking ceremonies—“the business with the phony shovels and the phony dirt is so stale and so worn out”—but even so, he was on hand for the ceremonial ground-breaking for West Lafayette’s State Street Project. Perhaps the fact he got to use a 25-foot dirt loader instead of the standard-issue spade had spurred a change of heart. Daniels was joined by West Lafayette mayor John Dennis, who manned a backhoe. The equipment came courtesy of Reith-Riley, the construction firm tapped to complete State Street’s $120 million revamp from west of the Purdue campus to the Wabash River. Reith-Riley President Keith Rose says despite Thursday’s festivities there’s still a lot of planning to do before people start seeing actual construction. "They won’t see an awful lot right away, we’re still in the early stages of design and putting the project together," Rose says. After that, the pressure’s on. Daniels has made it
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