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The University of Louisville’s new 20 year, $1.1 billion master plan may be hard for current students to grasp, since most of these projects won’t even begin while current students are here. The current order of the master plan’s implementation is unknown, but U of L Provost Shirley Willihnganz said they are working on that now.
“Part of what we’re working on now is the prioritization plan: what parts of the plan we would want to move forward with first, identifying how much money we think we would need and identifying where possible sources of funds would be,” said Willihnganz.
Willihnganz said the new $75 million academic building will be their top priority, and U of L is currently requesting funding from the Kentucky General Assembly for that.
“There are other kinds of things that we could move forward with if the university could bond them ourselves,” Willihnganz said. “Some things we have our own money to build with, and if the state would give us permission to use that, we may be able to move forward with that. There are state transportation funds that could be used for some of this, and we could go forward and ask for those.”
Willihnganz said she sees new parking decks and changes to parking coming in five years.
Meanwhile, for the Student Government Association, its top priority is a new student recreation center to be built by Kurz Hall. SGA President O.J. Oleka said they have distributed questionnaires to students, asking what new services they would most like to see. While he has yet to see the results, he anticipates a new recreation center to be at the top of the list.
“Concepts are good…my only concern is that it will be this organic document that grows and changes, and then it won’t move as quickly as it needs to,” said Oleka. “That’s why I would like to start moving on this [recreation] center now. If we can commit to it now, then we can have it up in four years.”
