The ISU Honors Program will leave behind its old home at Osborn Cottage and move into a new $2 million building near central campus.

Elizabeth Beck, director of the University Honors Program, said the new building is about 6,000 square feet, which is significantly larger than its predecessor, and is being financed through private donations.

The new building will be located north of Curtiss Hall and west of Farm House.

Steve Prater, project manager for the new Honors Program building, said the new building will be a two-stories and L-shaped.

“It will be a fairly low building and a fairly small building to boot. It’s not a Ross Hall. It’s a very modest building in terms of most of the buildings on campus, much more residential in scale than it would be say a classroom building or an office building in scale,” said architect for Facilities Planning & Management.

Prater said 10 to 12 sites across campus were considered, and the final selection fit the criteria committee members were looking for.

“There were some other sites that we looked at that were kind of close, but they just seemed to be too remote or not very accessible,” he said.

Beck said the program’s old home in Osborn Cottage is unaccomodating to the program’s needs.

“We have 1,000 students a week in classes in here, and it’s a little 115 year-old brick house,” she said. “While it’s quite charming, it’s not quite up to accommodating the traffic and the class loads that we have.

“Our rooms are very small. In order to get from one room to another, you have to walk through a room that is already a classroom building,” she said.

Beck also said the lack of air conditioning, heat efficiency and restroom facilities are problems with the old building.

“It’s kind of beyond repair, also. I mean repairing this thing is becoming quite expensive,” she said.

The new building will remedy most of the problems from the Osborn Cottage location, Beck said.

“The new building will give us the size of classroom; it’ll give us the classroom space; it will allow those classes to be taught without having to have people walk through them. We’ll have better restroom facilities,” she said.

The new building will also help with admissions sessions in the fall because since so many students are in Osborn Cottage, it forces the sessions out of the building and into various rooms in the Memorial Union, Beck said.

“This way, we’ll be able to have those visitors come to the new honors building, and we’ll have a living-room environment that can be used for that admissions,” she said.

Beck said the final site selection was presented to and approved by the Board of Regents last fall.

“Now what’s going in front of the Board of Regents [for approval] is what’s called the schematic design,” she said.

Prater said the regents will review the schematic design at their July meeting in Cedar Falls.

If the regents approve the schematic design for the new building, then the design development process will begin, Prater said. From there, the construction documents will be put together, and Prater said he hopes they can bid the project this fall, with construction starting either in the fall or first thing next spring.

Preserving the central campus landscape was an important consideration in choosing a site for the building, Prater said.

“That has been a very critical part of the whole process and from the siting standpoint, this probably has been one of the biggest challenges,” he said.

Beck said the new location will not dominate the central campus landscape.

“The building will not be standing out there in front of Curtiss or the greenhouses,” she said. “The plan is it will have greenery in front of it, so it’s going to be visible from central campus, but it’s not going to stand out there like a little neon building.”

Prater said he doesn’t believe the new building will take anything away from central campus.

“It’s really on the periphery,” he said. “Hopefully, it adds something to the central campus. I think from the designs that I’ve seen, I think it’s going to be a very nice building, a very nice addition to the campus, and really will help enhance the central landscaping.”