Funding for Castetter Hall addition dries up

The Castetter Hall addition, the hulking construction project next to the Yale bus stop, will not be completed by its scheduled April deadline.

Melissa Vargas, the strategic planner with the Provost’s Office, said the first and third floors would be built, but not usable. She couldn’t say when the building will be completed — if at all — since Bond D failed during the Nov. 2 election, leaving no available funding sources.

“We’ll continue with the legislative strategy,” she said. “It might take a couple of years, but that’s the primary way we get capital dollars. It remains a top priority for the Provost’s Office. We just don’t currently have an identifiable funding source.”

Only the building’s second floor will be operational. Bond D would have provided $3.8 million toward the building’s $9.9 million cost. The biology building addition will function primarily as laboratory space.

Richard Cripps, chair of the biology department, said 140 undergraduate employees work in the biology department, and the new lab space would provide students more work opportunities and study space.

“When you get new space it allows you to do new things and do things better, but I don’t think it’ll harm the (students) that we have now …” he said. “It was a disappointment, but also a motivation to make sure that it does get done eventually.”

Vargas said the biology annex would have been demolished after the Castetter Hall addition was completed, but it will remain at least for the foreseable future.

“It’s a small and very dysfunctional building,” she said. “It’s one of those buildings that’s very old and is an energy hog, and it’s just not functional for the current way they’re doing biology.”

ASUNM Sen. Daniel Parker, a biology student, said he was disappointed when he heard that Castetter Hall would not be completed.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “If the taxpayers aren’t going to do it, I think the University needs to reallocate money to finish buildings. That’s a bare minimum. Who wants to come to UNM where we have half of a biology building?”

Vargas said that the road to secure funding is unclear.
“We have actually, institutionally, not had the conversation about how we’re going to approach the next legislative session,” she said. “What else can you do if the voters don’t pass the funding?”