Cost for U. of Utah’s Natural-History Museum Climbs $33-Million

The Utah Museum of Natural History is due to open in 2011. (U. of Utah image)

After a three-year delay, the University of Utah unveiled a Polshek Partnership Architects design for a new Utah Museum of Natural History last week. The copper-clad, 169,000-square-foot complex is slated for a 17-acre hillside site and is designed to achieve a gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

The bad news, though, is that rising construction prices and changes to the building program have sent the project’s price soaring—from an estimated $65-million in 2005 to $98-million now, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Utah Chronicle. The paper attributes the delay to the project’s having received federal money, which brought with it a requirement for an environmental-impact survey of the site.

The survey, in turn, suggested that the new facility be made more sustainable, in part by doing expensive additional earth moving so the building can be built into the hillside to take advantage of the earth’s natural insulation. The project is designed to be powered by wind energy, and it will accommodate solar panels on the roof once money is raised to pay for them, according to another article in The Daily Utah Chronicle.

The project has received $25-million from the State Legislature and a $15-million donation—part of it in copper—from Kennecott Utah Copper, according to a news release from the company’s parent firm, Rio Tinto, which is based in London. The release notes that Kennecott operates “the largest man-made excavation in the world” not far from the site of the new museum. The new museum will be named for Kennecott’s parent firm, Rio Tinto, based in London.