The Division of Recreational Sports is facing skeptics after putting forth a proposition to have student fees fund a new $60 million Natatorium facility.
The cost of the project is estimated at $60 million, which will come directly from student segregated fees. The new building will add $60 for the next 30 years to the almost $50 students already pay per year for recreational facilities on campus.
Recreational Sports met with the Shared Governance Committee April 1 and gave an informal proposal on their tentative plans for the project, which include rebuilding a portion of the existing building, Shared Governance Committee Chair Jeff Wright said.
According to Wright, the committee questioned Recreational Sports’ decision to fund the project entirely through student fees.
“Some people liked the concept but having students pay for all of it raises some concerns,” Wright said. “For the most part, they would be in support of something like this, but they would like other revenue streams to be looked at.”
Dale Carruthers, director of the Division of Recreational Sports, said “there will be an effort” to secure external funding for the project. Carruthers said he seriously doubts they will receive state money, so the funding would have to be private.
Although Carruthers said he thought the committee’s response to the proposal was positive, Wright said “students were really skeptical of the plans to [rebuild] the Natatorium.” He said he was a little concerned with the way the group came to the committee.
“I think some of the members of the Division of Recreational Sports were under the impression that they could just come and get the support of the students and the Shared Governance Committee,” Wright said.
He said the committee made no decisions on the proposal and did not give any kind of support for it.
Recreational Sports will try to gain the support of Student Council and ASM in the near future, but they will be taking the proposal to the Campus Planning Committee on May 15 with or without it. The proposal will then go before the Board of Regents in August and will eventually make it to the state Legislature to be approved.
However, Carruthers said it is “really up to the students whether or not they want to see this on our campus.”
He said they will begin preparing to get on the ballot for next year’s spring elections. The referendum will be used to gauge student support of the proposal.
Carruthers said the project is needed because the building, which was built in the 1960s and updated in the 1970s, has become too small for the University of Wisconsin campus. The use of the recreational facilities has increased over the years to just short of 300,000 entries a year, and 31,000 different students used the facility last year.
“Whenever you do a facility like this, what you ask students to consider is an investment in future students,” Carruthers said.
