EVANSVILLE – The University of Southern Indiana is seeking $43 million in state funds to update several of their buildings – but they have a “long march” ahead of them to get the money.
School officials unveiled their capital budget requests in front of the Indiana State Budget Committee late last week. They seek overhauls for Rice Library, the Orr Center and the Arts Center.
Aaron Trump, USI’s vice president for government affairs, said those range from dragging the aging Arts Center into ADA compliance to creating more study spaces in the library.
It will be quite a while until they know if that work will happen. Like the rest of Indiana’s public universities, USI began working with the Indiana Commission for Higher Education in September to submit requests ahead of the Indiana Legislature’s budget session next year.
They officially submitted their first asks in October before meeting with the budget committee last week. After that, they’ll have to face at least two more governmental bodies – the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee – before final approval comes down.
That should happen sometime around April. If all goes well, work could probably start sometime in early 2026.
“There’s kind of a long march to getting approval for this,” he said.
What kind of upgrades would USI's facilities get?
The three targeted buildings vary wildly in age.
The Arts Center dates back to the 1970s. One of the photos included in USI’s presentation shows a sign directing occupants who need an accessible restroom to a completely different building. Trump said the structure was fully ADA complaint when it was built, but it falls well short of today’s standards.
The Orr Center, meanwhile, opened in 1990. It “will be the primary focus” of the work, he said.
“Updating the mechanicals in that building will be a significant portion of the cost,” he said. That will include HVAC work, plumbing, and technological upgrades.
The relative baby of the group is David L. Rice Library. The $27.5 million facility named after the university’s first president opened only 18 years ago, but it "just isn’t matching with what students want anymore,” Trump said.
“We have too many stacks and periodicals and we need more study spaces and collaborative workspaces and more publicly available computers and tech,” Trump said.
That kind of change will likely involve removing some books. Other pieces of physical media could digitized or archived, he said. But the library is too important to “take offline” all at once, so the work will have to done in stages – likely one floor at a time.
Where will the money come from?
The state will release revenue forecasts in December and April, which could determine if, and how, USI’s wishlist could be funded.
Indiana shoulders financial responsibility of all academically-focused capital projects at public universities. It’s just a matter of how. In 2019, Trump said USI took out bonds to fund capital work. The state then turned around and promised to pay those off over 30 years. The approach changed in 2023 when the state government, momentarily flush with cash, funded the projects outright. USI doesn’t expect that to happen this go around.
“But we are hopeful they’ll authorize a bond issue,” he said.