The University of Minnesota will ask state lawmakers for more than $270 million next year to help fix aging buildings and construct a new teaching laboratory on the Twin Cities campus.
The U's Board of Regents unanimously approved the school's legislative ask on Thursday. Minnesota lawmakers will convene for the 2022 legislative session on Jan. 31.
U leaders are putting forward the same state capital request they did in 2021, when lawmakers did not end up passing a bonding bill of public works projects.
The Legislature passed a nearly $1.9 billion infrastructure bill in October 2020 that included $75 million in funding for the U.
But the university only received $3 million that year to go toward a roughly 102,000-square-foot chemistry undergraduate teaching laboratory it wants to build on its Twin Cities campus.
The new building would support more than 3,300 undergraduate students, according to the university, and include 18 learning laboratories.
The U's 2022 legislative request totals about $274 million. About $200 million would go toward renovating and repairing existing buildings and the rest would help pay for the chemistry lab building, which has a total price tag of about $108 million.
Historically, the university has not received even half the amount it requests because lawmakers must divvy up available infrastructure funding to competing needs such as roads, bridges and housing.
