Enough with the delays

'W e're getting there" is SEPTA's slogan, but it might as well be the motto for Moravian Cafes as well. At Moravian, the latest round of delays has crossed the line from merely irritating to absurd.

To put this in perspective, three judges have been nominated for the Supreme Court since this project began. The new McNeil Center for Early American Studies was constructed and will likely open before Moravian does in January. And Taco Bell, one of Moravian's highly-anticipated tenants, has sold more than 1.3 billion tacos.

As this column has pointed out, it would have made sense for Penn's developers to push for a September opening for the cafes to coincide with the date students return to campus. The plan all along, however, was a mid-October target.

That has come and gone with a few excuses about rising costs and the war in Iraq.

A month later, these same excuses are being made, and a large mound of dirt sits on the floor, amid the construction, where customers should be by now.

Bickering over costs at this point in the game is ridiculous. Contracts that provide a finished product by a specific date should have been finalized a year ago, well before the space was shuttered. And to now hold things up over less than $500,000 makes it easy to see the flaws in planning for this renovation.

Just like students in classes who are penalized for turning in late work, most sizable construction projects include contracts with provisions for non-excusable delays which carry financial consequences for exactly this reason. This project should be getting cheaper each day it is delayed.

That would do little good, though, for the thousands of hungry people on campus who reasonably expected Moravian to open as originally planned.

And let us not forget about the restaurateurs who have been displaced because of this construction. Famous Famiglia's employees have had to work shifts at their chain's Philadelphia International Airport location because the campus spot has been closed for months.

Those people need to get back to their normal positions, and the rest of the Penn community needs the restaurants it was promised last year.

"We're getting there" just does not cut it anymore.

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