DONATIONS Deadline looms for YSU to raise funds for center

The university is relying on receiving a major grant to reach its fund-raising goal.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Youngstown State University's Paul McFadden is cheerfully optimistic, especially for a man with about a week to find $100,000.
That's how much YSU lacks in meeting a fund-raising goal tied to a $12.1 million recreation and wellness center being built on the campus' west side.
The university has until Wednesday to gather $100,000 so that it will receive an additional $600,000 offered by the Kresge Foundation as part of a challenge grant.
The total $700,000 at stake would go with the $11.4 million already raised by YSU and enable it to meet the estimated $12.1 million construction costs.
"We're very cautiously optimistic," McFadden, YSU's chief fund-raising officer, said Wednesday in assessing the chances of gathering the $100,000 needed in the next six days to land the Kresge funding.
The Troy, Mich.-based Kresge Foundation is an independent, private entity that grants money to nonprofit institutions worldwide.
Kresge said in December -- when YSU was about $1.8 million short of the $12.1 million goal -- it would give $600,000, provided YSU could raise $1.2 million by June 30.
If effort fails?
YSU has nearly reached that mark. But what will happen if the $100,000 shortfall can't be erased by next week's deadline?
"I'm fired," McFadden quipped, laughing.
He wouldn't speculate on what YSU will do if it loses the Kresge grant. "We're not thinking of that scenario," he said. "Our benefactors are well aware of our deadline."
Individuals, foundations and corporations have given donations for the project.
The center will the be the first such facility at a public university in Ohio built entirely with private funds, YSU says.
Work on the 65,000-square-foot structure began in April on a site that was once a parking lot.
Set for an August 2005 opening, the two-story facility, which will be attached to the Kilcawley Center, will feature a jogging track, fitness area, four basketball courts and a four-story climbing wall "that sticks out of the roof like a beacon," McFadden said.
Students will be charged a mandatory fee to help operate the center. It's unclear whether faculty and staff will be permitted to use the facility, which will be known officially as the Andrews Recreation and Wellness Center.
YSU officials weighed whether to make it open to the public through paid memberships. They opted against that out of concern that doing so would negatively affect the YMCA downtown, McFadden said.