Committee okays expansion

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Susan Smith, Community News Service Editor

PIERRE (CNS) – South Dakota State University could gain five new buildings and two new pieces of property if three bills passed by the South Dakota House Appropriations Committee Jan. 24 become law.

The state legislature must pass the bills so that the Board of Regents can accept the projects.

Swine nursery

A five-year-old swine nursery valued at $25,000 was donated to the university from a farm near Ideal, S.D. SDSU Vice President of Administration Mike Reger said the department of animal and range science plans to use the nursery to study liquid feeding, manure management and nursery pig production.

There is no cost to SDSU to move the building to campus, but there will be infrastructure costs for electricity, asbestos removal, footings for the building and road access. Those costs are estimated at $30,000, but Reger said he thinks the actual cost will be more like $20,000.

The prefabricated building will sit on the university farm’s swine complex north of the U.S. Highway 14 bypass. Indirect recovery grant money will fund the project. That money comes from additional dollars given with grants to cover costs of applying for them. Forty percent of that money goes back to the department and the original faculty member applying for the money. The remaining 60 percent goes to the university to cover the costs of applying and maintaining grants, Reger said.

Departments save what are basically discretionary funds for situations like the proposed swine nursery project.

“The bulk of the funds clearly are going back to support research,” Reger said.

The Animal and Range Science Department will maintain the building using their department funds. The ag college pays for all maintenance to its buildings, Reger said.

Storage space

The university is also proposing the addition of two new buildings that add 20,000 square feet of storage for various campus entities like the Agriculture Heritage Museum, the Ethel Austin Martin Program on Human Nutrition, the Physical Plant, radioactive and hazardous material storage, the Agricultural Experiment Station and residence halls.

Currently Reger said SDSU has to turn away some donations to the ag museum because it simply has no room to store them. Likewise, the ag experiment station has no space for its large farm machinery and hasn’t added storage space in 40 years.

The Ethel Austin Martin Program will give grant and endowment money it has to the construction project. The program then will have a space to house its mobile van which must be out of the elements in the winter, Reger said.

The university also has to store hazardous and radioactive material after experiments are complete, and needs a better facility for that, Reger said.

To store mattresses for the residence halls, workers must haul them up three flights of stairs into an attic.

Each department will contribute funds to construct the two storage units. Some parts of each will be heated and some unheated. Building costs are estimated at $600,000 for both.

“I believe we can do it for less,” Reger said.

New property

Along with the other two projects, SDSU wants to purchase two lots at the corner of Eighth Street and 12th Avenue.

Chi Omega currently occupies the house on one of the lots and will stay there for another year while it looks for new property. Another house is rented for office space for an SDSU Bush Foundation Grant that studies teaching and learning. Both houses are set up well for office space and are on the Board of Regents approved acquisition plan for SDSU, Reger said.

“Essentially what we’re trying to do is protect the main entrance to campus,” he said.

The university owns everything else in that block except for a women’s fraternity house.

The SDSU Foundation and the State College Development Association are holding the two properties for SDSU. It will pay $218,000 for both properties if the Legislature approves the purchase. Reger said the university plans to use patent and royalty funds and logo licensing money to pay for the purchase.

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

#1.887555:1871122420.jpg:sandl3.jpg:Mike Reger, SDSU Executive Vice President of Administration, testified in front of the South Dakota House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on Jan. 24 about three bills that would add three new buildings and two new pieces of property to the SDSU campus. The bills passed out of committee and will now go to the full House for consideration.:CNS