When soon-to-be residents at the HERE apartment complex showed up Wednesday — cars packed with furniture, clothes and other belongings — they arrived at an active construction site. Signs posted on the main door directed them up the street.

Instead of moving into their new apartments, lessees were sent to The Oread hotel to check in. In the hotel’s lobby, dozens waited in hope that assurances that they could move in at 4 p.m. would prove true.

The move-in date for the HERE complex, which has struggled to remain on schedule in the face of parking issues, has been pushed back multiple times. On Wednesday afternoon, construction crews continued to work, the whir of circular saws and yellow construction tape present.

“It’s been disappointing, because they were supposed to move in on the seventh of August,” said Jerry Hurt, whose son, J.C. Hurt, has rented an apartment at HERE. “But they have given some credits towards the inconvenience.”

photo by: Rochelle Valverde

Hurt, of Overland Park, was one of those spending Wednesday in The Oread’s lobby. Hurt said that they were told they’d be able to move in Wednesday morning around 9, but that he got an email marked “urgent” the night before.

“They said that the occupancy hadn’t been approved and that 4 o’clock would be the earliest,” Hurt said. “And that’s when they said they’d be doing all this today, and they would try to accommodate everybody who is here.”

The HERE project has been one of the more anticipated apartment projects in Lawrence in recent years. The previous City Commission provided the project an 85 percent property tax rebate after the Chicago development group touted the multistory, luxury apartment building as being a major boon for the city’s rental market.

While Hurt and dozens of others had lunch at The Oread’s restaurant courtesy of HERE, construction crews on site at 11th and Mississippi streets continued to work against the clock. Brady Hempel, a University of Kansas senior, also waited at the hotel. Hempel was understanding but said he was still hoping to move in Wednesday afternoon as planned.

“We packed up the cars and if you tell us it’s at 4, I’m expecting to be able to move in at 4,” Hempel said. “You know how things are, things don’t always go as expected, so you’ve got to kind of account for that. In the back of my mind I do know that it could not happen.”

News that the complex is safe to be occupied has yet to arrive. The City of Lawrence has been inspecting the site twice daily each day this week, but it still has not met requirements that will allow the city to grant an occupancy permit, said Scott McCullough, the city’s director of planning and development services.

About 3 p.m., McCullough said city inspectors in Fire-Medical, Public Works and Planning and Development Services would be going to the HERE complex later in the day to see if city codes were met for the project.

“They know their punch-list items and they’re working to complete it,” McCullough said earlier in the day. “And I think whether they receive their occupancy today depends on how much further along they get in the next few hours.”

Following an inspection around 5 p.m. Wednesday, McCullough said that the HERE contractor had not completed the project yet. He said the city did not grant HERE an occupancy permit due to general site conditions, noting some safety hazards within the building, on the façade and along the street. McCullough also noted some fire separation issues between the complex and the parking garage, but said that and all other work could feasibly be complete by the end of the day on Thursday.

“We will be back tomorrow,” he said.

A call made Wednesday to the Chicago-based development group that is building the HERE project was not immediately returned.