A long-discussed plan to include Ivy Tech Community College curriculum in the medical education campus under construction in Downtown Evansville is off the table, for now.
The Ivy Tech capital projects request submitted for the General Assembly's consideration in this year's session does not include anything for Evansville. The Downtown campus, officially known as the Multi-Institutional Academic Health Science and Research Center, is to open in 2018 with students in Indiana University, University of Southern Indiana and University of Evansville programs.
Local officials have said the campus will be critical to Downtown's rebirth, bringing substantial new vehicle and pedestrian traffic, as well as residential and business growth. The IU Board of Trustees, at the behest of Mayor Lloyd Winnecke and other local leaders, chose Downtown from a short list of potential sites.
When the medical school was first pitched, officials envisioned Ivy Tech Southwest would be a participant, and altogether, the campus would have somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 students
Local taxpayer subsidy in the development will be more than $50 million.
But because the General Assembly's last budget only funded IU and USI programs (UE, as a private school, is buying in on its own), the campus is now projected to have 500 to 600 students in one building upon opening.
Ivy Tech officials confirmed they are not asking legislators to fund an addition to the Downtown medical campus in the next two-year state budget cycle.
Instead, the community college system's capital request contains projects for Kokomo, which was hit last year by a tornado, as well as for Muncie, Columbus, Fort Wayne and Sellersburg.
"The Evansville project was one of those submitted for review by the College’s internal committee that prioritized the projects for the actual capital request," said Jeff Fanter, Ivy Tech senior vice president. "We used a new process for capital this year focused on needs based."
Asked if the Downtown Evansville project would be submitted by Ivy Tech for a future General Assembly's consideration, Fanter said in an email: "Prior to each legislative session, all of the capital projects will be reviewed and prioritized to determine which will be a part of our capital request."
Ivy Tech President Sue Ellspermann said in an emailed statement the Evansville project is in a four-year Ivy Tech capital plan presented to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, but it's not in the college's legislative request for the next budget.
"Unfortunately, we have more than $100 million in deferred maintenance which were left unfunded two years ago and that makes up our top five requests this year," Ellspermann said.
Local officials said they will push for the Evansville project's inclusion in future state budgets.
"I am disappointed that the project was not included in Ivy Tech's list of priorities," said Jonathan Weinzapfel, chancellor of Ivy Tech Southwest. "We appreciate the deep community support for including Ivy Tech in Evansville's IU Med School project and will continue to work for funding in the future."
Winnecke said Ellspermann informed him the Evansville project did not make the college's list of requests at this time.
"Getting Ivy Tech to move its health science classes from the North Side to Downtown is still absolutely a priority for the city," Winnecke said. "Dr. Ellspermann relayed to me the Evansville project was not one of their higher priorities because of other capital needs they consider far more pressing. We totally respect that and don't want to anything to derail what the Ivy Tech administration is pursuing in the legislative process.
"Having said that, we do think it's important to continue the discussions with legislative leadership and the administration to make sure that they understand the importance of getting Ivy Tech to Downtown," Winnecke said. "To that end, we'll be encouraging the administration and legislature to fund not only what Dr. Ellspermann has outlined as her institution's capital priorities but to also include Ivy Tech Evansville in an upcoming year."
State Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, agreed.
"We'll continue to plug and make other legislators aware," Becker said.