photo by: Sara Shepherd

Oliver Hall, at 1815 Naismith Drive on the University of Kansas campus, is pictured Monday, Feb. 20, 2017.

KU is expected to get state approval next week to tear down an old dormitory, while Kansas State is expected to win approval for millions in new athletic facilities, despite the uncertainty surrounding the Big 12 Conference.

The Kansas Board of Regents will meet next week to approve several building and facility requests for state universities. Regents are expected to easily approve a request to demolish Oliver Hall, the towering dormitory at 19th and Naismith that once housed more than 600 students before its closure in 2019.

University of Kansas leaders last year received approval from the board to tear down the 10-story building, but then the project did not proceed. KU has resubmitted the project, and this time it says it plans to start the demolition in the summer of 2022.

KU is proposing to spend $2.2 million on the demolition project. At one point there was discussion of a parking lot being constructed on the site after demolition, but the plans submitted to the Regents include no mention of a parking lot. Rather, the plans call for the site to simply be graded to a level surface after demolition.

The university hasn’t yet announced any plans for the property post-demolition, but the Journal-World has asked a KU spokeswoman about the future of the site.

Oliver Hall dates back to 1966, when it opened as a freshmen women’s dormitory. The demolition plan is on the Regents’ consent agenda, which means it is expected to be approved without opposition.

It is Kansas State, however, that has the bigger project on tap for Regents approval. K-State is seeking approval to spend $43 million on a volleyball venue and Olympic training center and $31 million for a new indoor football practice facility.

The volleyball center is expected to seat about 3,100 spectators, which would make it large enough to host NCAA postseason events and would be about 800 seats larger than KU’s Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena.

The Olympic training portion of the facility would provide weight room facilities, sports medicine areas and other such functions for K-State’s track and field, cross country, tennis and rowing programs, according to plans filed with the Regents.

The center would be built on land southwest of K-State’s football stadium and just beyond the outfield walls of K-State’s baseball stadium.

The indoor football facility would measure about 92,000 square feet — about the same size as KU’s indoor football facility — and would be built just east of the K-State football stadium on space that currently is used for parking.

K-State currently has an indoor practice facility, but the plans submitted to the Regents said the facility doesn’t provide good access to the football stadium and has poor air circulation. The plans said the site of the existing indoor football facility has been identified as a potential location for an indoor track facility.

K-State has been raising funds for the indoor football project for months and plans to use a mix of donor money and operations funds dedicated to the athletic department to pay for the project.

The nearly $75 million worth of projects come at a time when schools in the Big 12 Conference are openly questioning what their finances may look like in the near future. Both Texas and Oklahoma have announced plans to leave the conference, and the Big 12 commissioner has publicly said their departures could devalue future television contracts for the league by about half. If that’s the case, schools like KU and K-State could see a reduction of $20 million or more in television revenues that they receive from the league annually.

Despite the uncertainty, the K-State building request is on the Regents’ consent agenda, a sign that it is expected to be easily approved.

K-State estimates both the volleyball/Olympic facility and the indoor football center will open in June 2023.

The Regents are scheduled to act on the requests at their Sept. 16 meeting in Topeka.