Regents approve UI transportation center, golf facility

IOWA CITY – State regents approved several University of Iowa construction projects during a meeting here Wednesday.

The Board of Regents approved the UI plan for a new $23 million transportation center on its west campus. The West Campus Transportation Center will be built on Evashevski Drive across from Kinnick Stadium. The center will include a new Cambus interchange that would serve 4,000 passengers daily, as well as parking and Cambus offices and maintenance facilities.

The new center will connect to UI Hospitals and Clinics by way of a skywalk over Hawkins Drive to hospital parking ramp 2. The transportation center is needed on west campus to help accommodate an increase in traffic on the west campus that will come once the UI builds its $271 million Children's Hospital tower, officials said.

The site for the transportation center is occupied by a parking lot and the football team's Indoor Practice Facility. The center would be constructed first atop the parking spaces, while the practice facility later would be razed to replace the parking lost to the center's construction. Plans for a new indoor practice facility are under way as part of the UI's football operations project.

The transportation center is expected to be completed by July 2012.

The regents on Wednesday also approved the UI plan to construct a new building at the Finkbine golf course to provide an indoor training and practice facility for the men's and women's golf teams. The site is at the west end of the outdoor driving range and adjacent to the team's exterior practice area. The nearly $1.9 million project would be funded by the private gifts to the UI Athletic Department.