The Monsanto building will house health-related clinical outreach programs and centralize the NIU’s current health care facilities, officials said.

In June, NIU paid $4 million for the building and land and $2 million for the furnishings using a combination of federal and university funds.

Another $6.4 million is expected to be spent on equipment, such as examination tables and machines to draw blood. The facility will be ready for use in early 2007, said Kathryn Buettner, associate vice president and executive director of external affairs and economic development.

The building, located on Sycamore and Bethany roads, will house the NIU Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic and possibly the NIU Reading Clinic and NIU Physical Therapy Clinic, Buettner said.

“We felt by putting some of these clinical programs together under the same roof, we could get more interdisciplinary care for clients,” Buettner said. “A person who has a speech or hearing problem may also have a reading problem.”

The Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic serves about 5,000 students as well as people from the local community, said Anne Davidson, director of the Speech, Language and Hearing Clinic.

The current facility has outgrown its capacity.

The facility reached its capacity long ago and the school has been working for years to find an alternative location for it, Buettner said.

Davidson said she expects the number of people served by the clinic to double in the new building, which will have state-of-the-art facilities, larger treatment rooms and more soundproof suites for audiology testing.

The new facility will allow for more research and benefit the graduate students working in the clinic and the undergraduate students performing their observations, she said.

Administrators are pondering housing a new community health-care facility in the Monsanto building.

“The larger tri-county facility located in Malta is for people with little or no insurance to receive primary care,” Buettner said. “We’re thinking about setting up another satellite facility here.”