The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents is slated to review and vote on several UW facility projects during meetings today and Friday.

Today, Regent committees will sift through several requests posed by UW to expand and lease research facilities and acquire land.

UW is asking the board to enter a new lease agreement with a facility owned by Harlan Labs in Blue Mounds near New Glarus that would allow researchers to screen animals for disease.

The new facility would provide 19,000 square feet of animal holding space for the UW Graduate School, according to the board’s meeting agenda.

The leased space would allow the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center to quarantine monkeys brought into UW before introducing them to colonies already on campus in order to screen them for various diseases, WNPRC director Jon Levine said.

Levine said the space is needed because UW is at full capacity and is being pressured to gain capacity for housing new monkeys.

“The benefit here is entirely scientific,” Levine said. “It will facilitate the conduct of studies that would otherwise be on hold.”

The annual cost to lease the facility would be $627,760, according to the agenda.

Another research proposal the board will also consider is a request for UW to acquire 75 acres in the town of Middleton for approximately $5,650,000 plus additional closing costs to use to expand the UW Research Park II.

David Giroux, UW System spokesperson, said the request to expand the park is justified by the research park’s track record.

“The university’s research park has been extremely successful and this is an opportunity to expand it further,” Giroux said.

UW is also asking the board to allow it to accept a gift of six acres of land donated by Loyal and Bernice Durand, two UW physics professors emeriti.

Bernice Durand said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald the land they owned bordered the UW Arboretum’s conservancy and they shared the lake on that property.

“We realized that we wanted that land to be preserved as wild forever, and also knew that the Arboretum would like to own the whole pond (…),” Durand said. “The Arboretum people were enthusiastic about having the whole pond and the surrounding land.”

The land, which is valued at $350,000, will be used to add on to the already existing conservancy maintained by UW Arboreteum, the agenda said.

The UW Hospital and Clinics Authority is also requesting the approval of the board to develop a new autopsy and pathology suite that will cost $11,000,000, the agenda said.

The suite will be located within the Wisconsin Institute for Medical Research building on campus and is needed by the Department of Pathology and the UWHC to provide facilities for medical and forensic autopsies after their lease expires with the Veteran Affairs Hospital, according to the request.

Giroux said the requests he had seen were reasonable and he did not believe the board would have any problems with any of them.

The committees will formally review the proposals today and hold a vote during Friday’s meeting.