COLUMBUS, Ind. — The new main campus building project for Ivy Tech Community College in Columbus is on schedule, although officials are still working to lower costs on the project, which is currently $2 million over budget. The project’s original cost, including building and landscaping, was $32 million.
“Normally, when you do a building, and especially when you have design architects as creative as IwamotoScott, you’re going to be over budget,” said Chancellor Steven Combs at Tuesday’s Ivy Tech board of trustees meeting. “And we anticipated we would be over budget. We were over budget with our initial schematic design two weeks ago by $6 million. … Within a week and a half, we’d already got that down $4 million, so now we’re $2 million over.”
Combs said that as part of the work to lower overruns, the college has chosen to reduce the building’s total size from 82,600 square feet to 79,800 square feet.
“The key is we didn’t lose square footage in our instructional space,” he said.
For more on this story, see Wednesday’s Republic.
