UI faced with $2 million rent on Boise center

The University of Idaho will start moving into its problematic University Place project in Boise this fall, which costs UI nearly $2 million annually to occupy.

At a State Board of Education meeting in Moscow on Thursday, UI officers described the recent progress of the project, which has been scaled back from seven buildings to one, and the UI programs that it will soon house.

Law, architecture and natural resources classes will join research laboratories and alumni, student recruitment and athletics offices at the site, said UI Provost Brian Pitcher.

The Water Center building was initially set to be part of a large UI satellite campus. But the project ran into financial trouble several years ago, causing UI officials in 2003 to scale it back to just one building.

That doesn’t mean it won’t be of good use to the school, said UI officials. “It’s an opportunity to consolidate some of the locations and provides needed space for additional classrooms,” said Pitcher. “It also provides new laboratories that aren’t currently available.”

Though there are several tenants in place, the school is responsible for 130,000-square feet of space. Still, it plans on filling just 38,000 this year and another 65,000 in 2006. “Until we get (the excess footage) leased to other tenants, we are financially responsible for paying for that space,” said Laura Hubbard, UI’s interim vice president for finance and administration.

This year, the school will have to pay $2.84 million for use of the building, which includes maintenance, parking and technology costs. By moving out of other spaces, the UI will free up $160,000 to direct toward its Water Center costs, but it still requires about $1.96 million “from university revenues or other reallocations within the university,” said Hubbard.

News of the costs brought questions from the board, primarily whether the university was counting on an occupancy allocation from the state legislature to defray its costs.

The general business plans for the building are fiscally conservative, said Hubbard. “Maybe the one aspect that’s not conservative is our assuming that we will get that money,” said Hubbard. If the state withholds the allocation, like it did this year, the university will have to draw more money from inside, she said.

At the same meeting, the board approved operating budgets for all its schools. The University of Idaho’s $124 million appropriation continues a trend of state financial support that is not sustainable, noted the school in its budget report.

Board Member Blake Hall said he was concerned UI’s new task force of faculty and staff would come forward with a request for a bail-out or special appropriation from the state, even after school officials had promised that they would not ask the state for money to cover University Place shortfalls.

“I am not aware of any discussion regarding a special appropriation request,” said Pitcher. “I think we have all been very clear that it’s our problem, and we need to solve it ourselves.”

UI’s Executive Director of Institutional Planning and Budget Wayland Winstead said he wanted to be clear that the majority of the university’s financial issues have little to do with the Boise project or the $9 million the school gets from the UI foundation that have dried up from the project’s troubles. “University Place has exacerbated, but it has not in any way been the sole cause of the financial distress being faced by the university,” he said.

Hall noted that the UI was the only school that had a separate note about finances being unsustainable.

“Our circumstances differ considerably,” said Winstead, noting that the UI has the greatest percentage of old buildings of all the colleges and universities in the state.

In other decisions, the Board approved renewing student health insurance contracts. At the UI, the costs will increase 14 percent to $75.83 per month.

Voting 6 to 2, the board approved a policy allowing exceptions to the ban on hard alcohol on state campuses. Alcohol won’t be allowed at athletic events, but the new policy gives the school presidents approval of alcohol at scheduled events where it can “at least be contained to an area or to places where it can be very well controlled,” said board member Milford Terrell.

Hall said he was opposed to the policy in part because it was “sending a mixed message to the students that it’s OK to have alcohol on campus.”

Stone said the schools will always have an alcohol problem, “all we can do is control the access and environment.” The rule will allow drinks to be served at the Goldschmidt Conference, an annual meeting of geochemists and mineralogists to be held at the UI next summer.

Also at the meeting, board members heard about the progress toward UI joining the Division 1-A Western Athletic Conference, which will have UI athletes playing against teams from schools including Hawaii, Nevada, Boise State and Utah State. Switching to a conference that has more regional schools should improve attendance at games, said UI Athletic Director Rob Spear.

It will cost $600,000 to join the WAC, $50,000 of which the university will pay up front. The remainder will come out of the conference pay out every year for the next three years. The school also will save itself $175,000 in travel costs, since the away games will be closer than they were when UI was in the Sun Belt Conference, said Spear. That money will be directed back into athletics, he said. “We know we have to improve our facilities long-term,” he said. Projects will include expanding the stadium, but nothing will be started until a master plan is complete, he said.