Iowa is in a fiscal crisis. Governor Chet Culver has announced an unprecedented drop in state revenues, and an equally unprecedented across-the-board cut in state spending. Yet, the University of Iowa and the Board of Regents insist on pursuing a needless project which will cost Iowa taxpayers more than $100 million and have a negative effect on UI students.

By now, most Iowans know that a number of University buildings, including the Hancher Auditorium and Art Building complexes, suffered significant damage in the floods of 2008. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved funding for the repair of the existing facilities, and their protection from future floods. Based on early estimates of $30-40 million to restore the existing Hancher facility, and the state’s responsibility to provide ten percent of that to match the FEMA grant, restoring that facility would cost the state in the range of $3-5 million.

Yet inexplicably, the University has pursued what FEMA refers to as an “alternative project”—a FEMA grant to demolish and replace Hancher with a new building, with additional facilities not existing in the current building.  Replacing the building with a new one is far more expensive, and with the enhancements proposed for the new structure, the University’s share would be somewhere around $100 million.

The Des Moines Register published our comments about the University of Iowa's foolish plans to replace Hancher Auditorium in its October 21 "Opinion" section. That article seems to have disappeared from the Register's website, but you can still read it (at least for now) in Google's cache...