Public funding holding back new building
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Five years ago, the agriculture and biosystems engineering department did a feasibility study on a new research and teaching facility. Today, after a number of revisions, the project is nearly complete. All it’s missing is the construction funding.
Mark Huss, engineer with facilities planning and management and the project manager, said they were waiting on state appropriations.
“We’ve already done the initial design for the building, and a portion of the total project budget is private giving, but a larger portion is from state appropriation,” he said.
Craig Schmidt, director of development for the college of agriculture and life sciences with ISU Foundation, said the project was being funded by both private donations and state appropriations.
“We need the state funding to actually get the building going and, as you know, the state ran into some big financial problems last year and then into this year, so the funds we were hoping to request just aren’t there,” Schmidt said.
ISU Foundation isn’t responsible for state appropriations, Schmidt’s responsibility is to meet a goal for private funding.
“We do have a private goal, and that’s 13,200,000, so that’s our private fundraising goal for this project. The problem is that as this thing continues to get pushed out, we’ve already raised that goal once,” Schmidt said. “So it’s really hard to put a figure on what we’re asking the state for at this time. We’ll probably re-evaluate before we submit a proposal.”
According to the agriculture and biosystems engineering Web site, four of the larger donors for the project are Virgil Eilings, the John Deere Foundation, the Sukup family and Sauer-Danfoss. These donors have contributed about $8 million to the project to date.
Despite the recent downturn in the economy, none of the private donors have had to pull out of their pledges, Schmidt said.
“You always have that possibility,” he said. “We have not heard that anyone is having a problem fulfilling their pledge. It’s not unusual. It happens — not a lot — but it can happen.”
Jay Harmon, professor of agriculture and biosystems engineering, said that when the project began, his department basically submitted a wish list for what it wanted in a new building. “We know what classes we teach and what we need for labs and our research, so at that time, if price wasn’t an issue, we requested what we wanted,” Harmon said. “From there, we started paring it down to what’s realistic, so it’s kind of been a balance between economics and what we wanted.”
Harmon, who is the liaison between facilities planning and management and the department, said not only are their current facilities in Davidson Hall outdated, the department also needs the new space for research and larger classrooms.
“Davidson Hall is on its last legs,” he said. “Some of the new facilities will be much better than what we’re operating in now. I think our department does a really good job, considering some of the facilities we’ve had.”
Huss said he was put in charge of the project because it was his area of expertise and he graduated from the department in 1977.
In keeping with the university’s new pledge to have all new construction meet LEED accreditation standards, the new building is aiming for a gold rating, Huss said.
“The building is going to be located adjacent to the biorenewables research lab that’s being constructed right now, and we will continue with the sustainable features that building has,” he said.
One of the things the building will feature is a system to reuse 100 percent of the rainwater that collects on the buildings for things like flushing toilets and running a rainfall simulator that is planned for the building.
Harmon said the rainfall simulator was one of the many additions to the building that was planned to aid in research, but that the building was designed to balance the needs of faculty research and classroom use.
“There’s a lot of things that, where possible, we tried to overlap, because we feel the students benefit from being exposed to research settings, and research benefits from the teaching process,” Harmon said. “So we tried to set up in a way that the labs could be used for teaching but also at the same time they could function as a research lab.”
He said multiple uses of lab space would also keep them busy during the summer when students weren’t traditionally using them.
Both Harmon and Huss said a new facility was important to Iowa and the nation as a whole. “As we look across our department, you have to look at the priorities of Iowa, and we really fit in close with those,” Harmon said. “Agricultural production and our food safety, environmental economy, bio-economy and biofuels are some of the priorities of Iowa and they are things that our department is involved in. We bridge two of the largest colleges, two of the cores of the land grant university.”
Mark Huss, engineer with facilities planning and management and the project manager, said they were waiting on state appropriations.
“We’ve already done the initial design for the building, and a portion of the total project budget is private giving, but a larger portion is from state appropriation,” he said.
Craig Schmidt, director of development for the college of agriculture and life sciences with ISU Foundation, said the project was being funded by both private donations and state appropriations.
“We need the state funding to actually get the building going and, as you know, the state ran into some big financial problems last year and then into this year, so the funds we were hoping to request just aren’t there,” Schmidt said.
ISU Foundation isn’t responsible for state appropriations, Schmidt’s responsibility is to meet a goal for private funding.
“We do have a private goal, and that’s 13,200,000, so that’s our private fundraising goal for this project. The problem is that as this thing continues to get pushed out, we’ve already raised that goal once,” Schmidt said. “So it’s really hard to put a figure on what we’re asking the state for at this time. We’ll probably re-evaluate before we submit a proposal.”
According to the agriculture and biosystems engineering Web site, four of the larger donors for the project are Virgil Eilings, the John Deere Foundation, the Sukup family and Sauer-Danfoss. These donors have contributed about $8 million to the project to date.
Despite the recent downturn in the economy, none of the private donors have had to pull out of their pledges, Schmidt said.
“You always have that possibility,” he said. “We have not heard that anyone is having a problem fulfilling their pledge. It’s not unusual. It happens — not a lot — but it can happen.”
Jay Harmon, professor of agriculture and biosystems engineering, said that when the project began, his department basically submitted a wish list for what it wanted in a new building. “We know what classes we teach and what we need for labs and our research, so at that time, if price wasn’t an issue, we requested what we wanted,” Harmon said. “From there, we started paring it down to what’s realistic, so it’s kind of been a balance between economics and what we wanted.”
Harmon, who is the liaison between facilities planning and management and the department, said not only are their current facilities in Davidson Hall outdated, the department also needs the new space for research and larger classrooms.
“Davidson Hall is on its last legs,” he said. “Some of the new facilities will be much better than what we’re operating in now. I think our department does a really good job, considering some of the facilities we’ve had.”
Huss said he was put in charge of the project because it was his area of expertise and he graduated from the department in 1977.
In keeping with the university’s new pledge to have all new construction meet LEED accreditation standards, the new building is aiming for a gold rating, Huss said.
“The building is going to be located adjacent to the biorenewables research lab that’s being constructed right now, and we will continue with the sustainable features that building has,” he said.
One of the things the building will feature is a system to reuse 100 percent of the rainwater that collects on the buildings for things like flushing toilets and running a rainfall simulator that is planned for the building.
Harmon said the rainfall simulator was one of the many additions to the building that was planned to aid in research, but that the building was designed to balance the needs of faculty research and classroom use.
“There’s a lot of things that, where possible, we tried to overlap, because we feel the students benefit from being exposed to research settings, and research benefits from the teaching process,” Harmon said. “So we tried to set up in a way that the labs could be used for teaching but also at the same time they could function as a research lab.”
He said multiple uses of lab space would also keep them busy during the summer when students weren’t traditionally using them.
Both Harmon and Huss said a new facility was important to Iowa and the nation as a whole. “As we look across our department, you have to look at the priorities of Iowa, and we really fit in close with those,” Harmon said. “Agricultural production and our food safety, environmental economy, bio-economy and biofuels are some of the priorities of Iowa and they are things that our department is involved in. We bridge two of the largest colleges, two of the cores of the land grant university.”
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