Weeks after announcing a looming budget deficit, Illinois State University is looking at purchasing new property in Bloomington for its forthcoming College of Engineering.
At a regularly scheduled board of trustees meeting on Friday, ISU's administration will seek approval of a plan to spend no more than $17.5 million to purchase property at 1709 and 1711 G.E. Road in Bloomington. The property is currently owned by Country Financial, which a year ago announced plans to put the corporate office complex up for sale after assessing the needs of it workforce.
The move is a pivot from ISU's long-held plans to renovate the John Green Food Service Building and nearby Carter Harris Building into the 80,000-square-foot facility for the College of Engineering that is expected to begin enrolling students next fall. While the plan is to start with somewhere between 130-150 students in the first year, the goal is to have 500 students enrolled by the college's fourth year.
In an email to the ISU community on Wednesday, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Ani Yazedjian said the number of students at the university was a driving factor behind the change of plans. Earlier this year, ISU announced it had marked its largest incoming class of first-year students [4,285] and seen overall enrollment climb by 2.7%, to 21,546.
"This new location meets the immediate needs of the College of Engineering and has enough space to serve twice as many students in future years," Yazedjian wrote. "In contrast, to accommodate this many students on campus, the University would need to construct a second building adjacent to John Green."
If trustees approve the acquisition plan Friday, the university would scrap its renovation plans for its two on-campus buildings and prepare to relocate the new college to 1709 G.E. Road, ISU announced in multiple communications Wednesday.
The switch to housing the College of Engineering at the G.E. Road properties also would bring its own renovation costs: ISU estimates spending $37.5 million in "initial" renovation expenses, but said that would make the purchase "and renovation equal to the original costs of the John Green and Carter Harris building project."
Yazedjian, in her correspondence to the campus, acknowledged the transition might raise "questions about how the University can make such a sizeable investment at a time when we are also working to align our general fund revenues and expenditures."
In recent weeks, ISU's administration has laid out various cost-cutting plans to address a projected budget deficit of around $8 million this year that is expected to increase to nearly $32 million in the next few years if not addressed. Those plans have included letting some positions remain vacant and university-wide pay freeze for staff, among other measures.
"Although my explanation will not do the complexity of this undertaking justice, in essence, the University will be taking on debt to invest in the purchase and renovation of a space for engineering," she wrote. "This space and the programs that have been approved will draw new students to Illinois State. The tuition revenue from those students will, over time, repay the University’s debt and will help us counteract the enrollment decline experts anticipate will take place in the next year or two."
In a separate statement, ISU president Aondover Tarhule said the plan is "a creative and more affordable option that I’ve asked our Trustees to consider to better serve our future students.”
At a board of trustees meeting in February, Tarhule, then ISU's interim president, told trustees the plan to renovate the John Green and Carter Harris buildings would likely exceed $70 million; at the time, the board was considering a resolution to authorize an additional $3 million in project funding related to asbestos abatement in the John Green building. The resolution was approved.
Originally, the project was expected to cost around $61 million.
If trustees approve the resolution authorizing the purchase of the Country Financial property on Friday, the initial property closing is slated to occur in mid-November. The College of Engineering would not move into the facilities at 1709 G.E. Road until the fall semester of 2026, with renovations beginning in summer of 2025. Country Financial would retain ownership of its property at 1711 G.E. Road until Dec. 31, 2026.
