Anxieties persist that state projects pipeline could be drying up

Listen to this article

As Gov. Scott Walker pledged would happen, plans to build an addition to a prominent UW-Madison dairy building are moving forward despite lawmakers’ recent sparring over the state’s level of construction debt.

University of Wisconsin officials were quick Wednesday to celebrate the state Building Commission‘s approval of the long-planned expansion of the Madison campus’ Babcock Hall. Among construction companies, though, any eagerness to bid on the roughly $34.4 million contract was being tempered by the sobering recognition that state projects of a similar size and scope could soon become a rarity.

John Gard, a former speaker of the state Assembly who now lobbies on behalf of Neenah-based general contractor Miron Construction Co., acknowledged the state’s current building plans — or perhaps lack of new plans — are sowing uncertainty in the industry.

He estimated that Miron is now involved in 35 state projects. They range in size from the ongoing renovation of UW-Madison’s Memorial Union to a variety of much smaller contracts.

Gard said Miron’s relationship with the state has perhaps never been better. Still, he said, company officials are worried that recent attempts at curtailing public construction debt will soon make new work hard to come by.

Gard acknowledged that private construction has been picking up amid the current economic recovery. But he said he doubts the resulting business will prove strong enough to fill the hole that would be left by a sudden drop in state bidding opportunities.

“If the pipeline dries up,” he said, “you are going to see some significant side effects in the world of construction.”

Following a lengthy debate about debt levels earlier this year, Republican lawmakers and the governor passed a budget that authorizes the smallest amount of borrowing seen in 20 years. Walker had initially called for no new bonding to be approved for vertical construction projects.

Although also eager to hold down debt, Republicans lawmakers later revised the budget to authorize $86.2 million worth of new borrowing for a long-planned expansion and renovation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chemistry building and $15 million for the Confluence Project, a development consisting of an arts center and an apartment building in downtown Eau Claire. Legislators justified the additions in part by removing $450 million from Walker’s initial proposal to borrow about $1.3 billion for transportation work.

When discussing his construction plans, Walker said the state has enough unfinished projects from previous budgets to keep it busy for years. Among the work left over from earlier years is the proposed Babcock Hall expansion, which was officially added to state plans in 2013.

The budget for the expansion was originally estimated at about $32 million but was increased to $34.42 million on Wednesday in response to university officials’ success in raising money from private sources. The extra $2.5 million in gifts brought in will pay for five additional projects, including a separate processing area for raw milk and a larger research floor for the development of sterilized beverages.

The original plans call for the demolition of 2,770 square feet of space within Babcock Hall and of a 3,200-square-foot structure known as the Science House. Clearing that space will allow for the construction of a three-story, 54,650-square-foot addition on the west side of Babcock Hall.

Inside will be housed two floors of research space, a 99-seat auditorium, two food laboratories and a cheese-handling area. The project is meant in part to eliminate a number of perceived flaws, including interior arrangements that no longer meet modern health codes, weak security and student overcrowding.

John Lucey, director of the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, noted that Babcock Hall has not undergone a renovation since it was built in the 1950s. So in a sense, he said, the current work is long overdue.

Still, Lucey said he cannot complain about the way the Babcock Hall renovation plans have progressed. He said more than half of the money needed for the work had been raised from private donors within a year of when the project was first added to the state’s budget.

At a Building Commission meeting at State Fair Park in August 2013, the governor pledged that the Babcock Hall project would be among the projects spared from any cuts resulting from his and lawmakers’ attempts to reduce the state’s reliance on borrowing. Lucey said he expects work on the addition and renovation to start next summer and come to an end about two years later.

If progress has come more slowly than some would like, Lucey said, it’s because of the project’s complexity rather than because state officials have been pulling back on the reins. Follow @TDR_WLJDan