Building: $25 M; impact: priceless
About half the cost will be raised in YSU's Centennial Campaign.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The design work hasn't been done, but Youngstown State University is looking at a cost of $25 million to $30 million for a new Williamson College of Business Administration building.
That's the ballpark number, said Dr. David C. Sweet, university president.
The YSU trustee board already has agreed to allocate $15 million in state capital budget funds the university will receive over the next three years to help pay for the building, he said.
The rest will be collected from private contributors as part of the university's 2008 Centennial Campaign, Sweet said, noting that preliminary work on the fund-raising effort has begun.
The school is to be built on the southern edge of campus between Rayen Avenue on the north, Wood Street on the south, Phelps Street on the east and a proposed extension of Hazel Street on the west.
Sweet said there are only three individual property owners in the targeted block. The university has been in communication with all three, and there appear to be no significant obstacles, he said.
"We have sought to reach out and communicate," Sweet said, adding that YSU will work directly with the city to acquire the properties.
City panel recommends plan
The project got a boost Tuesday when the city planning commission recommended that the overall development plan for the Lincoln-Rayen-Wood development district be approved by city council.
The YSU business school building is part of that district plan.
This is an important revitalization project for both the university and the city, Sweet said, noting the goal is to link the campus, with its market of 13,000 students and about 2,000 employees, with the downtown business district.
Once the development plan wins city council approval, the university will move quickly to hire an architect to design what is expected to be a 75,000-square-foot building for the business school.
Its current facility, Williamson Hall, will be converted to needed classroom space for other programs.
Slated for next summer
Construction is tentatively slated to begin in summer 2007, and the project should be well under way during the 2008 centennial year.
The Hazel Street project, which would extend Hazel north from Wood Street to Lincoln Avenue, where it would be tied into campus walkways, is another part of the effort to link the campus with downtown, Sweet said.
Although property owners in the block where the business school is to be located appear agreeable to selling their land, not everyone in the path of the Hazel Street extension has bought into that idea.
One in particular, Joseph Grenga, owner of Grenga Machine, said he won't sell his building, which is directly in the project's path.
gwin@vindy.com