Construction has been under way for the Academic and Athletic Performance Center, yet the project still is seeking donors to fund areas of the building.

Originally estimated to cost $9.5 million, a June 7 press release by the NIU athletics department listed the cost of the AAPC at $12 million.

“We need about another $1 million,” said NIU Associate Athletics Director Tim McMurray. “But it’s a better building than when we started. It’s truly a landmark project. The Convocation Center was a dramatic capital improvement, but it didn’t need private funds.”

Hired in April, McMurray comes from Texas State, where he coordinated the private giving segment of a $24 million athletic facility campaign — the largest private athletic gift program in TSU’s history.

Mallory Simpson, president of the NIU Foundation, is heading the ongoing task of finding donors for the AAPC project.

“The project is closer to being 95 percent done,” Simpson said. “By football season you’ll really start seeing things. It will be fun to have that as a backdrop for the season.”

Eddie Williams, executive vice president and chief of operations, said the project will be paid for using bonds.

Simpson said the bonds are a form of tax-exempt financing, and there is a schedule for repaying the bonds and retiring the debt.

The NIU Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the university for all fundraising and gift administration, Simpson said.

McMurray is the medium between the foundation and the athletics department.

“It hasn’t been a struggle to find more donors,” McMurray said. “It’s been a roller coaster ride. We’re already starting to make progress with alumni in Arizona, and we’re also going to California and Oregon to see donors who have shown interest. We have to cast a wider net.”

NIU athletics director Jim Phillips said the growth in price of the AAPC has come with maximizing the building’s potential.

“The building started as a football-only building,” Phillips said. “Now it is designed for 469 student-athletes, and in the end, those using the building were the answer to its design. It’s exactly the way our consumers want it to be.”

But with the AAPC going up, a rise in parking prices and where to move the tent-tailgating area have become issues.

Todd Garzarelli, director of marketing, said pricing has come down to economic supply and demand.

“With the AAPC going up there are limited spots,” Garzarelli said. “We raised parking prices to allow us to secure additional funding so we wouldn’t have to seek other means of revenue.”

Though, with the rise in parking prices has come a decrease in ticket prices from last season.

Garzarelli said the athletics department priced the cost of season ticket packages this year by weighing the cost against other schools in the area.

More importantly, he said they based the cost off a five-game home schedule, but NIU plays six home games this season, and didn’t add the average cost of one more game to the total cost for this fall’s season ticket package.

“There’s a great value in this years [season] ticket package because you essentially get one game for free,” Garzarelli said.

Phillips reiterated that NIU President John Peters said the AAPC will be ready to move in to by Aug. 1, 2007.

Phillips said one of the largest donations still needed is the $500,000 NIU seeks for naming rights to the 125-man locker room.

“We feel it’s appropriate to have a former student-athlete’s name on the locker room,” Phillips said. “We’d also like former student-athlete football players to help with the individual lockers.”

However, Phillips said there are no concrete plans for the west side of the stadium once the football team moves out, but they have looked from a distance.

Phillips did note that gymnastics uses the wrestling room for practicing floor exercises. Once the strength and conditioning room is moved to the AAPC, Phillips said one of the two aforementioned sports will move its practices into the vacated space.

“There are some spaces that will immediately be available,” Phillips said. “We’re in desperate need of locker room space, and when football vacates we can divide those up among three or four sports. Structural changes will come in due time.”