...managed by Bond Brothers, Everett, Mass., is expected to be completed in August 2011. The visual-arts center is expected to cost about $40 million and is scheduled to be finished in 2012. Purcell notes that construction of the life-sciences building started just before the nation’s financial crisis peaked in September 2008. The college’s board of trustees seriously considered stopping work on the project before deciding that it should proceed.

Many public universities are being hit hard too. “States are reducing their support, and that trend looks like it will continue for some time,” says Peter Dourlein, director of the planning, design and construction department at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“We are facing the fact that we need to come up with other revenue sources—such as tuition and fees and research grants, plus donor funds”—to pay for major construction projects, Dourlein says. As an example, he cites a $28-million addition to the university’s student recreation center now being completed by Tempe, Ariz.-based Sundt Construction. The project is being funded entirely by a student fee approved by the students themselves in a referendum. Meanwhile, major donors are expected to provide the monies for two planned projects: an expansion of the university’s football stadium and a center for integrative medicine.

Campus megaprojects, while increasingly rare, still are being built. Buffalo State University in Buffalo, N.Y., for example, is planning $350 million of work over the next five years, including a $110-million science-and-math complex that broke ground in late September and a $48-million student housing project that will break ground later this fall. Construction of a $40-million technology center is expected to start in fall 2010.

Falling Prices

Perhaps the best news for educational institutions thinking about building is that materials prices are sagging, competition for projects has intensified significantly, and bids are lower than they have been in years. “It probably won’t get any cheaper” to build, says Dartmouth’s Purcell, noting that the expectation of very competitive bids was a factor in his college’s decision to proceed with its visual-arts-center project. Bids in general “are down 25% from where they were two years ago,” he says.

Competition is even more fierce in the now-depressed Las Vegas area construction market. Gerner, from the Clark County School District, says some project bids are coming in as much as 50% lower than they were three or four years ago during the building boom.