Industrial Arts Building set to be renovated

After a century-long journey, the Industrial Arts Building - closed since 2004 from disrepair and slated for destruction since 2008 - will be given new life as part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Innovation Campus.

That project is under development on the former state fairgrounds north of City Campus and will be based on food, energy and water research.

Developers and university officials announced Thursday that the building will hold sophisticated greenhouses and research labs within its original shell. Those facilities will then be home to a research collaboration between university resources and private industry that is the campus's hallmark.

The building will join the former 4-H building as part of a four-building, interconnected complex that will be the first completed piece of Innovation Campus. For an idea of scale of this first piece, the completed campus will comprise 2 million square feet; this chunk takes care of 300,000 of that or 15 percent, said Dan Duncan, the campus's executive director.

"So it's a significant portion of the campus we're kicking off with," he said in a phone interview.  

While the outer facade and architecture will be preserved and restored, the inside will be gutted to make way for the research space, said Duncan.

"What really made it feasible for this plan is it has two levels," he said. "It just came along that this was something that we could make work."

The building appeared doomed to demolition in 2008, when consultants for the university recommended it be torn down and UNL couldn't find another proposal worth the price. But last September, primary campus developer Nebraska Nova Development LLC said it might be able to save some of the building.

That was a relief for several Lincoln residents and architects who rallied to preserve the structure, which is on the National Registry of Historic Places and had been in use through both world wars and the Nebraska State Fair since 1913. Diane Walkowiak, a leading member of the Save the Industrial Arts Building effort, couldn't be contacted by press time, but has called it a mixed victory, according to the Omaha World-Herald.

"This is not so much a historic preservation as an adaptive reuse," she told the paper in an article published Friday. "The other option for the building was that it would be demolished. This is much better."

Now, the plan for that preservation is ready. It includes building about 25,000 square feet of greenhouse space on the building's roof, Duncan said. The space will augment the university's current greenhouses, including the bioscience greenhouses on City Campus and several more on East Campus, Duncan said.

"They'll be state-of-the-art," he said, saying that they'll also include improved security. That's a key for research that might work with plant diseases like E. coli and salmonella, for example.

Those greenhouses will overlie a ground floor with ceilings about 16 or 17 feet high, Duncan said, to make room for scientific equipment on the way.

"It's a very versatile space," he said, and could be used for soil mixing or sterilization and prototype manufacturing equipment. The ground level will likely also house electrical panels and other systems for the greenhouses above.

Whatever research finds its home in the building, Duncan said, university professors and students will be involved.

"Very much so," he said. "We want to stimulate a lot of intern opportunities."

The four-building complex was expected to cost about $80 million, from a mix of university, state and investor funding. This new plan will increase that cost, Duncan said, though he couldn't yet say by how much.

"We actually got some efficiencies in operations" by repurposing the building and connecting it to the others, Duncan said. However, he added, "It's still more expensive than tearing down and building new."

Construction is slated to begin this spring and be finished within two years' time, Duncan said.

"The goal is to have all of the buildings up and running during 2013," he said.

- danholtmeyer@dailynebraskan.com