Bond sales have been successfully completed to fund construction of the first building and required infrastructure for the Wichita State University Innovation Campus.
The Sedgwick County Public Building Commission issued revenue bonds totaling $44.945 million on behalf of the WSU Board of Trustees. The maturity periods range from 2018 to 2054. The bonds are guaranteed by a 40-year Sedgwick County mill levy that supports WSU.
The proceeds will be used for the Experiential Engineering Building, including an attached Maker Space, road and parking lot construction and related utilities.
WSU President John Bardo said the bond sale is an important step forward in the creation of the Innovation Campus.
“We’re very grateful to the citizens of Wichita and Sedgwick County for their confidence in WSU’s efforts to set the table for innovation that will grow the Kansas economy,” said Bardo.
The Experiential Engineering Building will include laboratories for the College of Engineering and a maker space open to paying members and scholarship recipients – part of a national trend toward providing expensive high technology equipment in a center that can be accessed by students, faculty and the public to develop their ideas for invention.
The new building will be built along 17th Street, west of Oliver, on the former site of Wheatshocker Apartments. It will be one of the first buildings on WSU’s planned Innovation Campus. The Innovation Campus is being built to provide a venue for researchers and technologists from private enterprise to work closely with WSU faculty, staff and students to create and deploy globally competitive technologies.
It is part of the University’s strategic vision of being “internationally recognized for applied learning and research.”
Construction on the new building is expected to begin later this year.
