Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1960 [PAGE 63]

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES APPENDIX

[July 29

RECOMMENDATIONS O F T H E UNIVERSITY BUILDING PROGRAM COMMITTEE FOR T H E 1 9 5 9 - 6 1 BIENNIUM I N C L U D I N G THE TENTATIVE PROGRAM FOR 19 6 1 - 6 3 AND AN ESTIMATE O F THE ADDITIONAL CAPITAL NEEDS FOR 1 9 6 3 - 6 9 (Approved by the Board of Trustees July 29, 1958, page 36) INTRODUCTION T h e Building N e e d s of the University Two kinds of needs are considered in the building program of the University: ( l ) catching up with the past, and (2) constructing buildings fast enough t o make room for the future. Both kinds require quick action on a large scale if the facilities of t h e University are not to "bottle-neck" when they are needed most.

CATCHING U P WITH THE P A S T

Although the University of Illinois has a large and imposing campus, the University does not have all the classrooms, libraries, laboratories, and offices that it really needs for its present requirements. If there were no backlog of needs, t h e problem of how to care for future enrollment increases and related demands might not be quite so serious. When the University was asked last year for a summary of the building needs for the next ten years, in preparation for the bond issue, the University of Illinois more than filled its proposed allocation of funds from its list of buildings needed right now. These were the buildings that had been approved by the University building committee in the past and had been submitted to the Budgetary Commissions of previous sessions of the General Assembly. Although the need was not questioned, final appropriations were always far less than the amount asked — always in the hope t h a t it would be easier to catch up with these deferred projects at some time in the future. This accumulation of a building backlog has been in progress for twenty-five years: first, during the Depression, when there just weren't any funds available no matter how great the need; then during World War II, when no construction could be undertaken because of material and manpower priorities; finally, in the postwar period when the state began a valiant attempt to make up past deficiencies. But the higher enrollments of veterans and a higher proportion of college-minded youth than ever before increased the demands. Just to hold even became a problem. Buildings went up, but there was no net gain in meeting the total building deficit. In fact, the backlog of needs increased rather than decreased. Evidences of this increasing need appear repeatedly in the biennial summaries and requests of the University's building committee as submitted to successive sessions of the legislature. In these reports are studies of building usage, building costs, relations of areas to students, to staff, to kinds of courses, and to all the other factors that enter into the problem of how much space is needed for a given number of students engaged in a given educational program. There would be little point in reproducing here the details of these reports, but a summary of the building requests and amounts actually received over a period of years is enlightening. Going back from the present these are the results: In 1957 the University requested $35,674,000; it received $14,275,000. In 1955 the University requested #37,185,000; it received $ 8,855,000. In 1953 the University requested #34,979,000; it received $ 8,096,000. In 1951 the University requested #39,580,000; it received $ 6,875,000. T h e story is much the same during the war years and the Depression. The last comprehensive building program took place at the University more than a quarter of a century ago, when during the 1920's the University of Illinois did get its building supply into adequate relationship t o its then current enrollment. But what was adequate in t h e 1920's is not adequate now. What was new then, requiring little maintenance, is beginning t o show the effects of constant use over a quarter of a century. Some laboratories are more than fifty years old and require rewiring, safety, fire, and lighting improvements, and further remodeling to fit changing uses and programs.