Ivy Tech Community College Will Raze Historic Building to Make Space for Classrooms

Ivy Tech Community College will tear down all but the facade of a historic, 96-year-old hospital building to build a $39.5-million classroom building, according to The Indianapolis Star.

Preservationists had fought a plan to demolish the building, according to the article. The building had not served as a hospital since 1973, although it had been used for a time as low-income housing. The college bought the property in 2006 for $1 on the condition that it would preserve the building’s historic features. For a time, the college engaged private developers who planned to turn the building into housing for students at Ivy Tech or Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. But the $25-million to $50-million needed to complete that project became unrealistic in a flagging economy.

Now the facade will ornament a 150,000-square-foot building housing classrooms and laboratories — that is, if the college can get funds from the state. Legislators are holding back the money the college needs until college leaders explain a recent tuition increase that was higher than a state recommendation.

The boom in community-college enrollment has been a strain for Ivy Tech, the article says. “We just need all the space we can get,” Hank Dunn, chancellor of the Indianapolis campus, told the Star.