NIU President John La Tourette is confident the univeristy will receive more than $7 million needed for the Faraday II addition and steam tunnel project.

The projects were approved as top priority by the Illinois Board of Higher Education last week as part of NIU’s overall more than $139 million fiscal year 1991 appropriations, more than a 7 percent increase from FY90 appropriations.

“Because our projects received such a high priority from the IBHE, we are confident that adequete funding will be approved,” La Tourette said.

La Tourette said all funding for these projects are based on the exsisting tax base, so all funding will come from the state.

IBHE Deputy Director Ross Hodel said the IBHE budget recommendations will be submitted to Gov. James Thompson and the state legislature on March 7, when final decisions regarding appropriations will be made.

La Tourette said both Faraday II and the steam tunnel top priority projects in the science and technology division of the Capitol Projects budget, a division of the IBHE budget, were largely funded through the increased cigarette tax.

For each of these projects there are three basic phases in which funds are granted: planning, building and equipment, he said.

The $5.5 million FY91 appropriations for Faraday II will bring the project to its final stage of funding, allowing NIU to furnish the addition with laboratories and research equipment.

La Tourette said NIU intends to “break ground” on Faraday II by late spring, and hopes to have the building operational by fall, 1993.

“Our objective is to replace the steam line at the same time that we break ground on Faraday II,” said La Tourette, adding, “it doesn’t make much sense to build a big addition to Faraday, without first dealing with the steamline which has needed replacement for several years.”

The steam tunnel project will replace the existing steam lines that serve Faraday Hall as well as Montgomery Hall and the Psychology-Math Building.

The current steam tunnels are over 25 years old and have suffered extensive corrosion due to water leakage and constant thawing and freezing, La Tourette said. “The new tunnels are much more durable and should last for 35 to 40 years.”

The IBHE also rated the remodeling of NIU’s Univeristy Health Service as 11th priority on their regular capitol projects list.

“We are very concerned about this project because there are many renovations that need to be made on the center, including roof repairs that must be attended to as soon as possible.

“We’re still very optimistic that we’ll receive funding for these repairs because many of the higher priority projects are relatively low cost,” La Tourette said.

Although NIU leads the state in appropriations, several projects were not included in the FY91 budget. These projects include almost $650,000 for accesibility improvements, $1 million for library additions, $1 million for a Montgomery anatomy addition and $800,000 for branch campus planning.

“There is just not enough revenue to cover all the requests,” Hodel said. “There have been many requests for library additions across the state and we have deferred them until next year so we can do all state library rennovations in one project.”