UTA’s social work building was on the brink of collapse. Now it has money for a new one
UT Arlington’s nearly century-old School of Social Work building has been described as “failing” and close to falling over. Now the school may finally get a new one after the University of Texas System Board of Regents approved $60 million Thursday for a new building.
The university’s School of Social Work and the College of Nursing and Health Innovation’s Smart Hospital will call the new building home. UTA has requested help to fund a new building for years, and the long sought-after dollars come nearly six months after state lawmakers failed to approve billions for capital projects for Texas universities.
“This is fantastic news for UT Arlington, and I commend the Board of Regents for making this important investment,” Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, and chair of the House Higher Education Committee, said in a statement Thursday. “UT Arlington is a world-class institution and the School of Social Work and College of Nursing are universally respected for their excellence. Students and faculty in both programs deserve to learn and teach in modern, state-of-the-art facilities.”
The $60 million will come from the Permanent University Fund, which receives income from royalties on 2.1 million acres of oil- and gas-producing land in West Texas. The land is also leased for grazing, wind farms and other commercial operations.
The building is expected to total $76 million. UTA had requested $72.2 million from the fund, but the system’s Board of Regents recommended and approved $60 million.
In a statement Friday, UTA President Vistasp Karbhari said the university was grateful for the board’s approval.
“The new building will assist greatly in enabling the School of Social Work and the College of Nursing and Health Innovation to continue meeting the critical needs of our region and State for highly qualified graduates,” Karbhari said. “We will start planning for the building shortly and more information will be made available as we proceed.”
Joe Carpenter, a spokesman for UTA, said the colleges’ and university leaders will work to identify potential funding sources to make up the difference, with a “substantial completion” of the building tentatively projected for December 2022.
“Its never easy because you’ve got all these institutions you want to help, but I think we’ve reached a pretty good balance here on this go around to try to do the best we can,” Board Chairman Kevin Eltife said at Thursday’s meeting in Austin.
UTA had tried to secure funding through the state legislature this past session, with a request for $76 million in Turner’s tuition revenue bond package for the new School of Social Work building, and an additional $59 million for Life Science building renovations.
At a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in February, Karbhari said the School of Social Work building, built in 1922 as the original Arlington High School campus, was “failing” and in a “state of severe distress,” and urged lawmakers to deem it a priority for funding.
“Over the years it has actually deteriorated structurally. It is held together by a set of cables on the top, and those cables are also starting to give way as are the extensions that sort of hold the cables together. So it is highly likely that building will fall down,” Karbhari explained.
But in a session focused on school finance and property tax reform, packages that would have authorized $3.8 billion in tuition revenue bonds for capital projects failed to pass.
“Despite the intentions of the governor and others, that didn’t get through the Senate,” John Zerwas, a former state representative who co-authored Turner’s bill and now serves as the UT System’s executive vice chancellor for health affairs, said at Thursday’s meeting. “It made it through the House, but I remain more optimistic that this might get some traction next time,”
Universities have seen a sporadic flow of funds from such packages, with the most recent one approved in 2015, and before that, 2006.
North Texas universities were forced to look elsewhere to fund their most pressing infrastructure needs after tuition revenue bonds weren’t approved, while less urgent requests have been put on the back burner. Tarleton State University was granted $63 million in Permanent University Funds in August for construction of its second building on its recently opened Fort Worth campus.
UT System Chancellor James Milliken said Thursday that a tuition revenue bond package would be pushed next legislative session in 2021.
“We will be advancing this again because of the importance of this to our students and the state of Texas,” Milliken said, “but this gives us a chance to address some of the highest priorities that are on the list.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2019 at 4:51 PM.
