New construction at Michigan State University.
This comes just a couple hours before tailgaters started pouring onto campus Saturday. MSU broke ground on its first new classroom building in nearly 50-years.
It might be inconvenient for some of them.
But the MSU community said the hassle is well worth the payoff.
"If I wanted to brainstorm on a problem set that involved biology and chemistry I would have to walk from Cata building on one side of campus to the chemistry building on another side to interact with my professors and TA's," said William Yakah, MSU neuroscience major.
That cross-campus odyssey won't be necessary for much longer.
The recycled Shaw Lane Power Plant will house all those research labs when it's finished.
Senior neuroscience major William Yakah is excited new students won't have to walk all over campus.
"But also to have space or the hub to meet with well-minded students who are also equally interested in translational research," said Yakah.
"And you see a building like this that's kinda the nexus for all of those topics on this campus, you're gonna get pretty excited," said John Engler, Interim President at Michigan State University.
But before the excitement comes to the adjustments.
"We may inconvenience a few tail gators, that used to be in this spot, the construction projects will take a couple of years so there will be some dislocation, but the tradeoff we get this re-use, and really the whole east side of the stadium comes alive," said Engler.
The new building is expected to be completed by the fall of 2020 and will cost around $72.5 million.
The state legislature appropriated $29.9 million of the cost.
This is the first time in 50 years the state has helped pay for construction of an MSU classroom building.
