Plans for the athletic department’s new academic center for athletes, which is being built using an undisclosed donation, describe it as a “model facility for universities across the country.”
The three-story building, which will be built on the parking lot on the corner of 13th Avenue and Agate Street, will house 37 individual tutoring rooms, a 112-seat lecture hall, 24 staff members and a reflecting pool.
Combined with the new arena and an alumni center, the learning center is part of the University’s plans for an east gateway to the campus.
But even though a donor is paying to build the center, it doesn’t mean the athletic department will be free of costs.
A license agreement between the University and the developer, Phit, LLC, indicates the athletic department will need to pay up to $750,000 to fill the center with state-of-the-art technology and at least $250,000 annually to operate the center.
These annual costs aren’t the only new expenses facing the rapidly expanding athletic department.
It will also spend more with the addition of baseball, the new arena and competitive cheerleading – all of which has some faculty wondering if the department has bitten off more than it can chew.
“This has been a fear of mine for a long time,” said Gordon Sayre, University Senate president. “That they will think that with the ($100 million donation from Phil Knight) they will be flush with cash and not really recognize that according to many predictions they’ll need all of that money to pay for the arena in the first several years.”
But University officials say the athletic department, which is one of only a handful of financially independent athletic departments in the nation, should earn enough revenue to operate all its new facilities.
“We’re not ever going to encourage the athletic department to take any risks that are going to jeopardize their ability to be self supporting,” said Frances Dyke, vice president for finance and administration.
The additional expenses for the academic center were not included when the University Senate analyzed whether the athletic department would be able to afford to make payments on the $200 million arena, Sayre said.
“The building is an enormous gift and that’s great but the ongoing costs appear quite substantial,” he said. These added expenses affect whether the athletic department will be able to stay profitable while making payments on the arena and paying for the expenses of its other sports.
The athletic department expects to be one of the only universities in the nation to earn income from baseball. Last year, despite winning their second national championship, the Oregon State Beavers baseball team operated with an $800,000 deficit.
Joe Giansante, University of Oregon athletic department director of community relations, said the fact that baseball is new here should be an advantage. The athletic department can sell uniforms, tickets, concessions, naming rights and innovative advertising to fund the sport. The baseball stadium will be paid for entirely by donations, Giansante said.
“Kudos to them for being able to bring in all this money and do all of the things they want to do,” said Paul van Donkelaar, University professor and member of the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee. “I think they’re doing a pretty good job of being as conservative as possible while balancing the desires of the donors.”
Although the University has kept secret who has made the donation to fund the center, it is being developed by Phit, LLC, whose director is Phil Knight. Phit, LLC is a subsidiary of the University of Oregon Foundation, and was used when Knight paid for a renovation of the athletic department’s medical center.
A question of fairness
The athletic department has said the current facility that houses academic services for student athletes, Esslinger Hall, is in dire need of replacement. The new learning center should help recruit talented players, it says.
But University professor Richard Sundt questions whether the lavish new facility, which restricts use for the general student body, is fair to students who are not varsity athletes.
“This seems to me to be going way over the top,” he said.
The facility will replace the parking lot, which includes several hundred spots for faculty, staff and visitors, but the donor is requiring that there be at least 10 spots exclusively for student athletes.
“This purpose built facility will assist student athletes in succeeding by providing quiet, yet invigorating, spaces for concentrating on their studies,” according to project descriptions filed with city planners.
Only the first floor will be open to the general student body, and if the University wants to use the facility it needs permission from the athletic department, according to the license agreement.
When the news first broke that the University was planning such a center, the plans didn’t include any portion of the building being open to the general student body, but pressure from the Intercollegiate Athletics Committee led to the addition of an open first floor, van Donkelaar said.
University faculty also pressured administrators to add more for general students in the new east campus entry. University President Dave Frohnmayer responded by saying the new center will be apart of a “learning neighborhood” that could include Academic Learning Services for general students. The license agreement and other planning documents do not include this.
Sayre said he wants to see more so that the “academic learning neighborhood is not just a catch phrase but actually backed up by something.”
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