While Student Association members and NIU officials continue searching for an artist to complete a new Martin Luther King statue, money remains a sticking point in the five-year quest to commemorate the slain civil rights leader.

SA Treasurer Bruce Williams said the 10-member statue search committee of administrators and students decided last week to set a $85,000 spending limit, but does not know where the money will come from.

Earlier estimates put the statue’s cost between $95,000 and $145,000. Williams said $10,000 was left from the first attempt to get a statue and the administration offered to match any funds raised by students.

NIU officials scrapped a partially-completed $21,000 statue in January, taking a $7,000 loss.

The sculptor of the first statue, Ernest Davidson, took the job after the Black Student Union proposed the idea in 1985 and received $10,000 from the SA for the statue, to be placed in the King Memorial Commons “free speech area” after renovations.

“We had a hard decision on that statue, but it was a right one,” said Eddie Williams, NIU Finance and Planning vice president.

Bruce Williams said the committee has no specific design, but said the statue should be “larger than life.”

But money “is going to be a big problem. I hope the campus will get behind this,” Eddie Williams said.

Although the commons project is separate from the statue, it too ran into financial trouble when the Chicago-based architects Perkins and Will underestimated the project’s cost by $200,000.

NIU was forced to cut back plans after the lowest bid came in at $790,000, far above the $500,000 original budget.

The Board of Regents since approved $705,000 and to rebid the project in April, with $100,000 to come from parking funds and the remainder to come from leftover Build Illinois money, Williams said.

Although the NIU Parking Committee justified the $100,000 with plans for three new disabled spaces, Williams said plans include as many as 10 new spaces in the south end of the bus turnaround and the strip facing Neptune Hall.

Because the commons was a parking lot until 1975, it is filled with asphalt which requires special, and expensive disposal. Williams said new plans will cut costs by landscaping over much of the old asphalt.