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Art students will likely see an overhaul of their dilapidated old engineering shops postponed again after the Jindal administration announced plans to shuffle the project’s funding for economic development.
 
The administration announced plans Friday to scrap several capital outlay projects statewide. The move is designed to free up funding for a $30 million incentive plan to attract North Carolina-based steel company Nucor to St. James Parish.
 
The administration has been lobbying the company to build a $3.5 billion, 900- to 2,000-job steel and iron facility along the Mississippi River.
 
Emmett David, Director of Facility Development, said the old engineering shops, where art students work on their projects, are the most important program to lose funding. The building is more than 75 years old, and David said it is in need of a serious overhaul.
 
David said projects funded by capital outlay usually take decades. The most recent funding hurdle isn’t the first the project has faced, and it will further postpone the date construction can start.
 
“If we don’t receive funding, we add a month, we add a year,” David said.
 
David said the current round of funding will pay for the design process.
 
“An architect has been assigned,” he said. “But now we don’t have the money to go through the process.”
 
Still, David said he knows many of the repairs the building needs. The project would replace windows, lights, mechanical systems and toilets. Kilns, hoods and other creative machinery would be updated.
 
David said the building would also be brought up to current life safety codes. The building was constructed under the 1934 code, which David said “really wasn’t much of a code at all.”
 
Rick Ortner, a University art professor and former dean of the College of Art and Design, has been waiting for the renovations since 2002. He said he has given up being disappointed in the project’s future.
 
“I ignored the whole thing,” he said. “I’m just too cynical.”
 
Art students said on Monday the building badly needed renovations. They also complained that art was suffering more than other programs.
 
“I love the building. But it’s dirty, and it needs to be cleaned up,” said James Packard, sculpture junior. “Art’s always been put last in Louisiana.”
 
Jonathan Wagner, ceramics junior, said the department is always playing second fiddle.
 
“We’re always second to athletics. We’re always second to business — they just got a new building,” he said.
 
The art building isn’t the only project affected by the shuffle.
 
The University’s affected projects include $1.1 million for the art building, $3 million for the Louisiana Animal Diagnostic Laboratory, $825,000 for the Homeland Security and Environmental Technical Center and $600,000 for the LSU Fire and Emergency Training Institute, according to Jason Droddy, director of External Affairs.
 
Droddy said the Art Building is the most important stalled project, and the adjustments are a result of legislative financial finagling.
 
Droddy said in previous years legislators would cram as many capital outlay projects into the budget as they could, even if the total sum was greater than what could be paid for. The governor then selected which projects received funding.
 
Today, the Legislature must propose a capital outlay budget it can pay for.
 
However, Droddy said this year’s capital outlay budget, approved in the last legislative session, echoes the old one.
 
The Jindal administration, then uncertain of the Nucor project’s fate, told the Legislature to approve a capital outlay budget that did not include the plant. If the project did come through, Jindal said enough money would be bumped out of the budget to pay for the incentives package.
 
Now that the plant’s passage seems certain, Nucor is being inserted into the budget — and the four LSU-related projects are among those shoved out to make room.
 
All four LSU-related projects were bills proposed by Rep. Hunter Greene, R-Baton Rouge. Greene’s office did not return phone calls by press time.
 
Jindal’s proposed alterations must be approved by the state bond commission Oct. 21. Droddy said the commission is historically controlled by administration allies, so chances of the changes being halted are slim.
 
 
 
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Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]