Marquette University announced that it plans to build a new, $100 million College of Engineering facility at the southwest corner of Wisconsin Avenue and North 16th Street in Milwaukee. Four university-owned apartment buildings on the site will be demolished.
The first phase of the project will be a 5-story, 100,000-square-foot building. Groundbreaking for that project is expected in the spring, and construction is expected to be completed in August of 2011. The building will feature the Discovery Learning Laboratory, a 2-story engineering materials and structural testing laboratory and other teaching and research laboratories, common areas for students and office space.
That structure will be linked to a future 150,000-square-foot building that will include classrooms, offices and additional laboratories.
MU officials say they have more than $68 million in pledges for the $100 million project, and will continue aggressive fundraising work to complete the entire project as soon as possible.
“With $25 million cash in hand and pledges of $10 million (that) we expect to receive over the next two years, the (MU Board of Trustees) expressed confidence in our ability to move forward,” said Marquette University president Father Robert A. Wild.
“I’m confident that we will raise the full $100 million cost of the project and I’m committed to doing so,” said Opus Dean Stan Jaskolski. “We need more engineers, and we need a facility where students, faculty and our industry and educational partners can come together to problem solve and design solutions. This new facility is being explicitly designed for collaboration at multiple levels. It is truly a gift to the Milwaukee region, taking advantage of our urban location and providing space for innovation and idea sharing.”
The new College of Engineering facility will be the latest addition to a building boom going on at the Marquette campus. MU had more than $130 million in construction projects in progress during the summer. In August, the university opened a new residence hall, Rev. James J. McCabe S.J. Hall, in a renovated former apartment building at the northeast corner of North 17th Street and Wisconsin Avenue. Construction is expected to be completed in November on a new student services/administration building, located at North 12th Street and Wisconsin Avenue and named Joseph and Vera Zilber Hall (after the founder of Milwaukee-based Zilber Ltd. and his wife). Construction of the new Marquette University Law School facility, to be called Ray and Kay Eckstein Hall, at the corner of 11th Street and Clybourn Avenue, is expected to be complete next summer. MU is also renovating the Varsity Theatre and remodeling classroom and laboratory space in several academic buildings.
