UTEP develops multi-year plan to transform aging infrastructure

EL PASO, Texas ( KTSM ) — UTEP’s President Heather Wilson presented a “master plan” to the University of Texas System’s Board of Regents on Wednesday to transform the campus’ aging infrastructure.

“Our facility condition index, which is the ratio of deferred maintenance to the replacement value of our facilities, is one of the highest in the state of Texas. We didn’t get into this problem overnight. We’re not going to get out of this problem overnight, and it’s going to be a combined strategy over many years in order to restore the infrastructure of the institution,” Wilson told the Board of Regents.

Wilson said that they assessed every building on campus, and they identified $341 million worth of deferred maintenance.

“We have a number of pieces of our infrastructure that really are not worth maintaining, others that need to be brought back up and others where we need to do the maintenance consistently over time. Because it’s a heck of a lot more expensive to defer it and then try to recover after you have 42 leaks in the library roof, which, honest to God, did happen,” Wilson said.

The plan laid out several points to address these issues including maximizing the use of infrastructure, eliminating 5 percent of the current infrastructure, which Wilson says is not worth maintaining, but most notable to update the charge structure for outside events.

“Ten years ago, UTEP had five outside events at the Don Haskins Center. Paid-for ticketed events. This year we will have 36, but each one of those needs to throw revenue back on to our infrastructure so we can maintain it,” Wilson said.

The plan also proposed several projects and ideas to address many of the campuses’ needs.

Among those were to acquire land from the Asarco property located East of I-10, build new freshman student housing adjacent to Kidd Field, restore the student union and landscaping, and to build a new Student Success Building.

Wilson also provided an update on the current construction of the Advanced Manufacturing and Aerospace Center and Texas Western Hall, which she says are on cost-schedule, with the former on pace to be “substantially” completed by January 2025.

The plan was set up with the vision and goal of increasing student enrollment by 30,000 students, grow research expenditures by $200 million, increase student housing by 1,000 beds and to increase community engagement by having more events in the years leading up to 2030.

Wilson will be hosting the university’s annual Convocation Ceremony at 10 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 23, where she is expected to discuss the plan and address students, faculty and staff about some of the university’s biggest updates.

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