Colleges Continue Construction Projects, Some with Stimulus Money

While economists spend the summer debating how close the recession is to bottoming out, a number of colleges — large and small — are busy building or preparing to build, in some cases with stimulus money from the federal government.

The University of Notre Dame, for instance, has projects worth $243-million under way, according to the South Bend Tribune. And a development company has a $200-million mixed-use project going up just south of the university.

The on-campus projects alone are keeping between 500 and 700 construction workers busy, the paper reports. “I can tell you year in and year out Notre Dame is our best customer for the building trades,” said Mike Compton, the business manager for the local electrical workers’ union. “There are jobs that go on in our area that are bigger jobs and employ more people but Notre Dame continually employs our members year in and year out.”

On a smaller scale, Moravian College is wrapping up construction of a $25-million, 231-bed housing complex in time for fall occupancy, says The Express-Times. The six-story, 100,000-square-foot facility also houses a dining area, a wellness center, and four classrooms.

The University of Missouri System has issued bonds worth $332-million for projects on four campuses, reports radio station KBIA. About three-quarters of the debt was issued under the federal government’s stimulus rules, so the government will pick up 35 percent of the interest payments. The bonds were issued at an interest rate below 4 percent, university officials said. The system’s vice president for finance and administration, Nikki Krawitz, told KBIA, “The cost of capital for us will be probably the lowest it has been, it will ever be.”

And Rice University has just been awarded $11.1-million in federal stimulus money through the National Institute of Standards and Technology to help pay for a new 110,000-square-foot physics building. The facility, designed by KieranTimberlake and already under construction, is due to open in 2011.