ORONO, Maine — University of Maine leadership has approved spending up to $9 million on a laboratory that will help scientists study pest management and threats to human and animal health across the state.
The University of Maine System board of trustees approved the funding for the future Cooperative Extension Diagnostic and Research Center during its regular meeting Monday in Bangor.
It will be the only facility in the state able to identify ticks and test them for transmittable diseases, including Lyme. It also will be the base of research in the state for issues from potato blight to salmonella in eggs to livestock diseases.
Today, much of that work happens in Hitchner Hall on campus, but the building wasn’t built to handle things such as large farm animal necropsies.
“We’ve been planning for several months,” John Rebar, executive director of the extension, said Tuesday. The university’s facilities management team is working with WBRC Architects/Engineers to determine what will be included in the facility and, ultimately, what it will look like. A rendering isn’t yet available.
The lab is expected to be a roughly 12,000-square-foot, single-story building, though that could change as the design work continues.
Maine voters backed the borrowing of $8 million toward the lab’s construction during the election last November. UMS and the Cooperative Extension are contributing $250,000 each, and Maine Technology Institute has offered $500,000 for laboratory equipment.
“This is very important to the state of Maine,” Rebar said.
University of Maine Cooperative Extension provides services to Maine businesses, farms and municipalities by researching and providing solutions to agricultural and economic challenges.
Rebar said the extension would like to break ground on the project before the close of this year or very early in 2016, and to move its scientists into the new space by the end of 2016. About 20 people will be working in the building, he said.
The building will be built just off College Avenue on University Park Road, in a field formerly used as a practice space by the marching band, according to Rebar.
A design team has been touring facilities at Tufts University and University of Vermont, and it plans to visit The Jackson Laboratory in order to build a concept of how it might set up the future UMaine facility.
The project comes as the university system attempts to downsize its building space.
Recent independent reviews by Sightlines, a Connecticut-based facilities consultant, found UMS has more space than it needs, some of its buildings are underused, and much of its square footage is old and in serious need of costly repairs that, in some cases, might not be worth the investment.
Several efforts to get rid of excess, aging or underused properties are under way. During Monday’s UMS trustees meeting, for example, the board voted to dispose of a vacant building at 11 Granite St. in Portland near the University of Southern Maine campus. The building has been out of use for several years, and utilities are shut off.
The system says neighbors have expressed interest in a property exchange agreement, which could give the university another nearby property that could be used in the future for an expanded or reconfigured Maine Law School parking area.
In March, system leadership authorized the disposal of several buildings on the perimeter of the University of Southern Maine campus. Other options could be on the table as well, including demolition, leasing or repurposing. The “white houses,” as they’re commonly known, are a series of former residential buildings, located on Chamberlain Avenue, Deering Avenue and Granite Street, that were converted into University of Maine System office space.
In another notable attempt to shrink the system’s footprint, Chancellor James Page has said he hopes to sell the system’s downtown Bangor headquarters by the end of the year, and relocate staff to campuses.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.