Buildings on Illinois’ college campuses were falling apart when lawmakers approved $2.9 billion for higher education construction as part of the 2019 Rebuild Illinois capital plan. The funding brought hope for long-overdue upgrades, but the slow rollout has left colleges in limbo.
Five years later, half of the 16 promised projects are still tied up in planning.
“It’s been slow, and it’s been frustrating at times,” said Matt Bierman, vice president of business affairs at Eastern Illinois University, which is planning to build a new science building with its funding.
A series of setbacks have stalled progress, including staffing issues at the Capital Development Board, the state’s construction management agency, rising post-pandemic construction costs and local disputes over how to stretch funding that no longer covers what university officials originally planned.
Construction costs shot up nearly 40% by 2023 compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to Associated Builders and Contractors.
“We lost about $30 million in buying power,” said Mark Luer, dean of the College of Pharmacy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. “We just couldn’t get everything we wanted in the original concept.”
SIUE was able to build its Health Sciences Building, but it came with major changes to the original plan.
“We started making tradeoffs, like, ‘Well, we really need this. If we’re going to cut back, let’s cut back in these areas,” Luer said.
SIU Carbondale faced a similar problem with plans to fully renovate its 1960s-era Communications Building on the Carbondale campus with roughly $85 million allocated from Rebuild Illinois. By the time they set out to finalize the design, officials no longer had enough funds to do what they’d originally planned. SIU leaders initially had asked lawmakers for additional money, but when it didn’t come, they started moving forward with a scaled-down design, according to Hong Cheng, dean of the College of Arts and Media.
Lately, state officials have sought to provide some relief. The Illinois Board of Higher Education’s 2025 budget included $575 million to help schools affected by rising costs see their projects to fruition. For 2026, the board is urging lawmakers to carry over any unspent funds and speed up project approvals to ensure those under Rebuild Illinois are completed within the six-year timeframe, according to IBHE spokesperson Jose Garcia.
Promises to ‘beef up’ staff
The state itself has also faced challenges to completing these projects. The Capital Development Board oversees all major projects to ensure contractors, designers and builders stay within budget and meet state requirements. But the agency’s staff has been overwhelmed by the surge of projects created under Rebuild Illinois.
“There’s a lot of projects … and they can’t be accomplished all at once, because it’s got to go through the CDB,” said Bierman, the EIU administrator. The university has faced delays in redesigning its planned new science building to match the new funding reality, in part, because the state lacks the resources to move quickly, Bierman said. He expects EIU to complete the project by 2029 — a decade after the state passed Rebuild Illinois.
The agency reported in 2023 that many projects fell behind schedule due to a wave of retirements, according to a public accountability report on the Illinois comptroller’s website.
Tamakia Edwards, who was appointed executive director of the Capitol Development Board in May after the retirement of her predecessor, said in an interview she and her staff are looking for ways to ensure projects stay on track. That includes efforts to “beef up” the agency’s current workforce of about 160 who oversee all legal, financial and planning aspects of hundreds of projects.
“We have 658 (projects), in all phases of project delivery,” Edwards said. “We’re constantly looking at process improvements, how to do things better and faster, and how to mitigate risk. Those are constant conversations I’m having with our team.”
The pandemic created workforce challenges, she said. But Edwards cautioned that even under the best circumstances, projects take a long time to complete.
“It’s not like funds are appropriated on Monday and then we’re out the gate in 30 days doing the project,” she said. “There are also unforeseen challenges and design and scope development and prioritization changes. There’s a lot of things that are happening behind the scenes throughout the lifecycle of a project.”
Edwards noted that while the project-planning process can often be lengthy, construction has been moving quickly once projects go to bid. Luer, who is overseeing the project at SIUE, found this to be true.
“The pandemic slowed the design phase of it, but it didn’t slow the construction,” Luer said. “Once we got to the point of putting it out for bid, it all moved really quickly.”
Luer said he anticipates SIUE’s construction to wrap up this spring, and for the building to host its first classes with the start of the fall semester in August. The SIUE School of Pharmacy, which has been in temporary facilities since its formation in 2004, will finally have a home once the new building opens. Luer said it’s been a long haul and he and others on the Edwardsville campus are eager for the project’s completion.
“I’m just looking forward to what we can imagine we’re going to be able to do with facilities that were actually designed for the purposes that we’re going to be able to use them for,” Luer said.
Shifting priorities
Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Eastern Illinois University will have to wait several more years for their projects to become reality. SIU Carbondale will receive nearly $15 million in addition to its original $84 million allocation for the Communications Building. Officials see that as good news, but it also means more design work — and further delays.
While Bierman said EIU is grateful for the project, it’s also been a challenging process. Nearly a quarter century will have passed by the time officials expect construction on the science building to wrap up. “I don’t know how much longer they’re going to stay ahead of the curve in terms of getting something designed that’s going to meet today’s needs,” Bierman said.
Bierman said the process for requesting state funding for building renovations and repairs isn’t flexible. Once a project is identified as a priority, he said, it’s difficult to change plans. While universities can shift priorities before selection and appropriation, they can’t reallocate funds from one project to another.
Going forward, EIU hopes to focus on renovating existing spaces rather than building new ones. He also urged state lawmakers to provide more consistent state capital funding for universities, rather than focusing their efforts on only a few large-scale projects.
According to IBHE data, public universities across Illinois face more than $8.3 billion in deferred maintenance. This backlog of neglected repairs — leaks, mold remediation, heating and cooling repairs, and other issues that worsen as aging buildings deteriorate — has nearly tripled over the past two decades.
While many buildings at state universities hold historical value, officials say they are becoming obstacles to recruitment. Declining enrollment and budget shortfalls make it harder to maintain aging buildings, creating a vicious cycle.
“We want renovation dollars. We want to fix what we have, instead of a building that somebody can put a shovel in the ground for a press release. We want something that’s practical,” Bierman said.
Edwards, of the Capital Development Board, acknowledged the “reality” of the aging infrastructure, and said there is near constant discussion and strategizing about how to address the problem.
“We have some rich history in our buildings across the state, and we want to preserve that history and take care of our assets,” she said.
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Ryan Grieser and The Saluki Local Reporting Lab contributed to this story. Grieser is a journalism student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. This story was produced for Capitol News Illinois through the Saluki Local Reporting Lab, supported by grant funding from the Pulitzer Center and the Illinois Press Foundation. Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.