Before the decade is over, the wrecking ball will be coming down on Clippinger Laboratories.
Clippinger, Ohio University’s main science building, opened in 1965 and has been deemed too expensive to renovate to meet the OU science departments’ needs.
OU is instead opting to build a new $90 million building — deemed the Interdisciplinary Science Facility — that will combine faculty from across science departments, said Harry Wyatt, associate vice president for Facilities.
Clippinger currently only houses the departments of Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Geography, and Geological Science, according to OU’s website.
Clippinger will be demolished after the completion of the new science building. Both projects will be financed with debt, Wyatt said.
The announcement comes after OU spent $800,000 repairing Clippinger’s roof during the 2012-13 academic year, according to a previous Post article.
Construction of the Interdisciplinary Science Facility will not start until mid-2015, but OU is starting to gather feedback from faculty and students as to what they’d like to see in the new building. It’s a process that can last up to nine months, Wyatt said.
“One goal is to replace (Clippinger), which has accumulated quite a bit of deferred maintenance, and another goal is to better meet programmatic needs,” Wyatt said.
It isn’t clear where the facility will be built, though Wyatt said building it on West Green near the Russ College of Engineering and Technology and OU’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine is being considered.
The new building changes what OU’s 2011 Capital Improvement Plan had planned for Clippinger. In fiscal years 2015 and 2016, $45 million was to be used to build a smaller science building while another $45 million would be used to renovate Clippinger, Wyatt said.
“The Interdisciplinary Science Facility represents a significant investment in future success of the science programs at Ohio University,” said Robert Frank, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, which encompasses all departments housed in Clippinger. “In particular, it will ensure continued excellence in a number of science disciplines in the college.”
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