Students are sounding off over a proposed plan to build an on-campus football stadium directly where Colorado State University’s Horticulture department calls home.
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Although new Horticulture facilities have already been approved by the CSU Board of Governors, not everyone is happy.
“If they want to tear it down for a stadium, it would hurt the research that is going on here,” Shannon Coleman, a CSU Animal Sciences Graduate student, said.
Coleman is worried that her long-term research project might be put on the back burner.
“So I thought, so are we going to postpone my project? Do we have to wait till they build a new greenhouse? Do we have to rush and get done before they tear down the greenhouse?” Coleman said.
We brought those questions to Steve Newman, CSU’s Director of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture.
“One of the things that we’ve been assured is that before this facility is taken down, we will have operating facilities to move into,” Newman said.
But uprooting history isn’t always easy, this facility has been in the same place on campus for more than 60 years.
“Most of my students that are interested in greenhouses—it’s hard to get them to leave. They love working here; they love being here,” he said.
If funding is approved, CSU will build a state of the art football stadium near Lake Street and Meridian, while additionally building a new Horticulture center a few minutes away off of Center and Prospect.
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Undergraduate students like Ryan Jaebker welcome the project after feeling the effects of working in an aging facility.
“Things don’t stay stable, environments change quickly, tools are scarce and hard to come by and so we kind of just have to work with what we have,” Jaebker said.
As a final plan pushes forward, Newman assures his students their feedback will not be forgotten.
“My passion is to make rue that whatever facility we build, has a strong long term impact on C-S-U,” Newman said.
