The Board of Regents approved a $76 million plan to build a new athletic center and renovate existing athletic facilities near Camp Randall in their Friday meeting.

The new building will be paid for by money the University of Wisconsin Athletic Department makes along with private donations, according to Athletic Department spokesperson Justin Doherty.

Doherty added some revenue would most likely come from ticket sales, increased money from the Big Ten expansion and the new conference football championship game.

Doherty said the new athletic center and building renovations are necessary to keep up with the strong competition Badger athletes face.

“It’s really about us doing what we can from a facility standpoint to remain competitive,” Doherty said.

The new facility would feature a sports medicine clinic operated by UW Hospital, a College of Engineering computer center and a new strength and conditioning center, according to a Regent report.

Part of Camp Randall and the McClain Center would also be renovated, including building a tunnel from the McClain Center over to the football stadium, the Regents’ report said.

The renovations to the McClain Center will also include doubling the size of the Fetzer Student Athletic Academic Center and increasing the locker room space for the athletic teams, according to Teresa Adams, senior administrator with Facilities Planning and Management.

“The renovations to the McClain basement will give locker room space for programs that aren’t high profile, like women’s softball, who haven’t had their own space in the past,” Adams said.

The new building and the renovations have had a hard time getting past the planning phase in the past.

The athletic center was originally in the current budget but was cut because of concerns over the engineering computer lab, Adams said.

“Some people believed we could use service space in a building out on the East side (of Madison) to house the lab,” Adams said. “But it turned out it wasn’t feasible due to the nature of the engineering program having to be open 24 hours a day and having to find transportation out that far.”

The renovations to the McClain Center and the football stadium were supposed to be included in the 2005 Camp Randall expansion but were cut because of funding concerns, Adams said.

Even though the Regents have approved the building as a part of their capital budget request, it will still have to be approved by both state legislatures and the governor as a part of the larger UW System budget requests, Adams said.

If approved, Adams said, construction would begin in early 2012 starting with the new performance center. She added they would then move to renovating the McClain Center and Camp Randall during the football team’s offseason so the construction wouldn’t interfere with any home games.

The construction would then be finished sometime during 2014 or 2015, Adams said.

Adams added they are now looking into finding an architect to design the building, even though it hasn’t been fully approved.

However, if the new building is cut, UW will still have to pay for any architect they hire, Adams said.