Butler hosts groundbreaking ceremony for latest project
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Butler University is growing again.
Friday at 2 p.m., crews will host a ceremonial groundbreaking on a new student housing building. It’s one of many projects happening on Butler’s campus right now.
Crews have already gotten started on this new $43 million residence hall. The school is also renovating Sunset Avenue in front of the residence hall’s construction site. It’s all a part of Butler’s 2020 Progress Plan, aimed at improving the academics, health and safety and campus environment over the next five years. Butler just finished renovating Hinkle Fieldhouse before the start of this basketball season.
Many of the residence halls were built back in the 1950s, so Rich Michael with Butler University, said it was time to upgrade.
“Nowadays our students want more than one outlet per student, and they don’t like to go down to the end of the hallway to go to the bathroom,” said Michael.
The new “state-of-the-art” facility will house more than 630 students, plus it will have lots extra amenities, according to the school.
“It’s actually two buildings, one with a connector. That connector has a lot of the ammenities in it. So it will be a four-story connector that is going to have social space, gaming space and study space for the students. It’s a state of the art facility and when we toured other facilities like this throughout the country, you almost feel like you’re in a resort,” said Michael.
The new housing should be open by fall of 2016.
One of the most important factors in all of the improvements is campus safety. As the school works on the streets that separate campus from the surrounding neighborhoods, the goal is to have a safer traffic flow and more room for bicyclists. Once construction is complete, Sunset Avenue will have new lanes, landscaping and medians. That construction should be complete in August 2015.
Butler is also working on a new 1,000 space parking garage on campus. Crews broke ground on the building in September. 24-Hour News 8 asked about that project’s status, and the school said it is slated to open by August 2015. The university is also negotiating with three tenants for the retail space in the garage. One of those tenants will be a sit-down restaurant, while the others will likely be quicker places to grab food or convenience store items.