Monday, April 29, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A new library for UNLV is included in the building program approved by the Board of Regents for 1997-99.
Regents hope the program quiets complaints about Southern Nevada being shortchanged in the past.
The spending plan totals $97.9 million, with almost 80 percent going to Clark County campuses.
Regent Mark Alden of Las Vegas told the board of the University and Community College System of Nevada that there are not enough facilities in the South to take care of the students.
More students could have been accepted, he said, if the facilities had been available.
The program calls for $77.5 million to be spent on UNLV and the Community College of Southern Nevada and $20.4 million on Northern Nevada projects.
The largest project is a $52 million library for UNLV. Its 300,000 square feet would rival the Thomas & Mack Center in size. UNLV President Carol Harter said it would have 2,500 study spaces compared with the 1,000 in the Dickinson Library and would house 1.8 million volumes, compared with the current 800,000.
It will have a robot retrieval system to help students get books and should adequately serve UNLV for 20 years, regents said. Of the $52 million, $15 million will come in donations. Harter said this money has already been pledged and the last major contributor will be announced soon.
The plan calls for a portion of the current library to be converted into a law school. The regents agreed to set aside $1 million for law school planning.
The program also includes $25 million for the West Charleston Boulevard campus of the community college. President Richard Moore said this money will construct an academic building and a fine arts facility.
The Henderson campus of the community college is recommended for $17 million for a science complex, classrooms and faculty offices.
Moore said two projects on the community college priority list may be the wave of the future. The construction list sets aside $5 million for a new campus at Summerlin.
This "high tech" center, with 200 computers and 12 classrooms, would be built on land owned by the Clark County School District and would be adjacent to a new high school.
This cooperative agreement, Moore said, would permit the high school students to use the computers in the morning and the community college students to use the high school classrooms at night.
This partnership would enable the community college to expand its campuses at a lower cost.
Also in the building program is $3 million for a "high-tech" center at Moapa Valley High School in Overton.
And there is $2.5 million for a student services building addition at UNLV.
These recommendations will be submitted to the state Public Works Board, which puts together the state's capital improvement program.
The university system received $73 million from the 1995 Legislature compared with the $97.9 million it is asking for this time. It is also requesting an additional $15 million for maintenance and repairs for the various campuses, compared with the $12 million it received last time.
University Chancellor Richard Jarvis and Vice Chancellor for Finance Tom Anderes had heard the complaints about ignoring Southern Nevada, where the major student growth was taking place.
Jarvis said 1995 was an "odd" year when most of the construction funds went to Northern Nevada schools.
They presented figures that said UNLV has received $57.7 million in building funds from the state from 1989-97 compared with $39.3 million for its sister in Reno.
The community college in Clark County was given $61.3 million compared with $50.5 million that went to its Northern counterparts.
"Our study clearly demolishes the misconception that Northern institutions fare better than our Southern institutions," Anderes said. The funding is cyclical, he said, with the scale tipping back and forth.
But Southern Nevada regents reminded Anderes that the big growth has been in Clark County.
According to his figures, the full-time student enrollment in Southern Nevada is 25,000 compared with 16,000 in Northern Nevada.
The North-South battle surfaced when Las Vegas Regents David Phillips and Carolyn Sparks questioned spending $1 million to start development of a new campus south of Reno.
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