Northern gets more than $30 million for buildings

Montana State University-Northern has received $25 million for a new recreation center on campus, the Aurora Complex, a long-time project of Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel and a potential asset for the campus' recruitment efforts.

The $25 million comes from Montana House Bill 5, which became law last week, passing through the Legislature with bi-partisan support, a major funding bill also provided $6.8 million to Northern for repairs and upgrades to current buildings.

The first planned phase of the project, completion of Tilleman Field, the football field to go with the complex, was completed in 2021.

The Aurora Complex is the biggest of nine initiatives to boost student recruitment and retention that Kegel and his colleagues at Northern have been working on for nearly a decade, and it's a milestone he said he's celebrating..

"This is the game changer," he said. "Of all the initiatives this is the one that will have the most impact."

He said this funding isn't just money that they can use to build a major asset to the campus, but a vote of confidence from the Legislature and an indication that they understand what Northern represents to the state and its workforce.

Kegel said they have a lot of ideas for the center, including a gym, a black box theater, bowling alley, coffee bar and many others, but much will depend on what architects say is possible with the money they have.

He said they are setting up listening groups with students and staff to see what they are looking for and they will bring that to the designers who will give them an idea of how much they can do with the money they have.

He said there is a chance that the building they want might end up being a little bit higher than the $25 million, but not by much and he doesn't anticipate it will be difficult to make up the difference.

The primary goal of this project, Kegel said, isn't just to provide students a great facility, but to attract more students to the campus, which has been one of the biggest goals of his years as chancellor.

He said four years is a big commitment and students, very understandably, have expectations of what a university campus should have and when he began as chancellor the campus wasn't offering enough outside of its academic programs to get the kind of enrollment he wanted to see.

To remedy that, he and his colleagues came up with nine big initiatives to improve the campus which he hopes will take Northern, which is typically thought of as a regional institution, and make it the kind of place that will draw in students from a much wider area.

Kegel said a lot of people have worked incredibly hard to make this happen, and now, nearly all of those nine initiatives are either completed or close to it.

Among them was the construction of the Diesel Technology Center and the bolstering of their arts programs, as well as strengthening their relationship with Great Falls College, all of which are done or getting there.

He said this complex will probably be one of the first, if not the first, stops on any tour of the campus for potential students.

"It will be very impressive," he said.

Kegel said now that they have enough funding to start getting architects and engineers drawing up plans they can start looking at hard numbers, but he and his team have been planning for this project for years.

He said when they first had the idea for the project they did a kind of feasibility study, looking at six other comparable campuses who had done similar projects and examining how it affected their enrollment.

The results of that study, he said, made it clear what a game changer a facility like this could be and they immediately started looking into how they could make it happen.

Kegel said it was difficult to get any specific planning for the building itself because they didn't have the money to bring in architects and engineers, but they had enough of an idea that they were able to create a number of theoretical renderings and schematics which helped them a lot when gathering support for the project, but now they can get more specific.

"Now we have some real money to work with," he said. "Before we were on shoestrings."

He said they have a lot of ideas for the building, with some more certain than others.

He said the building will certainly have a kitchen and likely some kind of coffee bar for students.

Kegel said they are also looking at making a gym for students to work out, including, possibly, a training pool for students to use.

He said Armory Gymnasium is great, but there is so much demand for it between the campus and the surrounding community that it's often hard for students to actually get a chance to use it as often as they should, and that's an issue they're hoping to remedy.

He said it would also have meeting spaces and a lounge for students to study along with a bookstore as well as recreation activities.

One idea they've been thinking about, Kegel said, is a bowling alley.

He said there's an old bowling alley in the basement of the Student Union Building but its been closed for over 10 years after repeatedly flooding, and at this point it's so old that it's nearly impossible to find parts for, so a student group suggested to him that it should probably be rebuilt.

He said the complex might be the perfect place to do something like that.

He said they are also contemplating the possibility of a black box theater for their theater program as well as other spaces for classes to use.

Whatever else they do with the complex, Kegel said, one thing they really need is a large space that can be easily converted for community use for events.

While this is a campus project, he said, such a space would be for student use primarily the size of the building could accommodate an area that could be used as a multi-purpose event space.

Ultimately, he said how much they can do will come down to what the architects and engineers say is possible, but much of what they do will be guided by students and staff.

Kegel said they are setting up large groups and listening sessions to get an idea of what modern students are looking for, something that he and his fellow staff members aren't always going to know.

"What does a student today have for expectations?" he asked, " ... I'm old. I'm out of touch with the kind of things a 20-year-old would expect to have. Even with younger faculty members, it doesn't take too many years before they can get a little bit out of touch with that kind of thing too."

Kegel said securing funding for projects like this is always a struggle, but the community, as always, came out in force to support the project, contributing everything they could.

However, he said, there's only so much you can ask from the community and he knew they wouldn't be able to raise $25 million from the community alone, there just isn't enough disposable income that they could ask for that much in good conscience.

So, he said, they had to ask for support from the Legislature, and, thankfully, with all the local Legislators on board and broad support from across the state, they were able to make it happen.

Kegel said it wasn't always a sure thing, though, as Gov. Greg Gianforte initially rejected the idea of contributing state money to any new building projects on campus, so even though the complex was on top of the Montana University System Board of Regents building project priorities it looked like it might not get any funding.

However, he said, Rep. Mike Lang, R-Malta, championed an amendment that got the funding into HB5 and all the local legislators got behind it. He said seeing legislators from across the state testify in favor of the project and attest its importance renewed his confidence that things would work out.

He said he and campus staff have made efforts to impress the importance of the role their institution plays in the region and state to legislators and those efforts appear to have paid off.

Another thing he's excited about, Kegel said, is the $6.8 million the campus got to repair and upgrade their existing buildings.

Normally, he said, he requests $2 million, which he never gets, but getting more than triple that has put them in a position to get some serious work done, especially on Pershing Hall.

He said Pershing is one of their buildings that, as well as being hard to get around in generally, isn't very handicap accessible and they want to install an elevator which he said will revitalize the building.

Kegel said they are also upgrading roofs in a number of buildings as well as upgrading their air conditioning and heating systems.

"Northern is going to be in good shape," he said.

As for the campus' nine initiatives, Kegel said, the one that still has a significant way to go is their Equine Center which will allow students to study the care of horses.

He said they already have a curriculum for the programs that would use the center as well as the land for it, but they still need to fund the actual building, which they are going to start focusing on more now that they have the Aurora Complex funded.

Overall, he said, looking back on the progress they've had with the nine initiatives, things are looking good and he's already thinking about what comes after.

"Step by step, brick by brick we'll get them done. Then we'll come up with nine more," he said, chuckling.

Between the Aurora Complex, general building upgrades and the culmination of so many initiatives the next few years at Northern are going to be extremely exciting for him and, he hopes, everyone else.

The other Northern projects funded in the bonding bill are:

• Vande Bogart Library roof replacement - $675,000

• Brockmann Center heating, ventilation, air conditioning ugrade - $1,907,320

• Campus EMS building controls upgrade project - $400,000

• Electronics Technology heating, ventilation, air conditioning and lighting upgrade - $800,000

• Pershing Hall renovation - $2,400,000

• Metals Technology Building roof project - $400,000

• Health and Recreation Complex, operations and maintenance - $585,240.