Time has come to move River Campus ahead

For more than two years, attention has been focused on legal efforts to stop the city's financing plan for its share of Southeast Missouri State University's school for the visual and performing arts.

The River Campus is aptly named and located. Thanks to a generous gift a few years ago, the university was able to purchase the former St. Vincent's Seminary property, which has one of the most commanding vistas of the Mississippi River to be found between St. Louis and Memphis.

The historic seminary once prepared young men on their path to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church. After the seminary closed in 1979, the future of the property was clouded. One effort attempted to claim the grounds and building as a way to preserve history and promote the arts, but that private venture was unsuccessful.

When the university obtained the seminary property, it announced a bold and visionary plan to turn it into an arts campus. In addition to renovating the site's most historic building, plans also called for the construction of a new performing arts center plus an art and cultural museum.

When the River Campus project was first unveiled four years ago, its cost was estimated to be just under $36 million. A financing plan shared that cost among the university, the city and the state. The university and city would each raise one-fourth of the needed funding, and the state would be asked for half. So far, the state has committed more than $16 million, of which $4.6 million is available as soon as reimbursible expenses are incurred. The remainder of the state funding is less certain, given the current state budget woes.

The university has been raising private donations for its share of the project, including a sizable gift -- more than $1 million -- from a Sikeston benefactor.

The city's funding -- at the heart of all the legal debate -- comes from sales taxes on hotel rooms and restaurant checks.

With last week's decision by the Missouri Supreme Court in the city's favor -- and with one recently filed lawsuit still outstanding -- local officials are having to readjust their focus. Instead of legal maneuvering, city and university officials have other matters that need attention.

One is the timing of the sale of state bonds which would be repaid from revenue generated by the hotel and restaurant taxes. While the city is certainly on more solid legal ground than it was before last week's court decision, there is still another lawsuit that questions an agreement between the city and university over a deadline for securing funding for the project.

And four years is a long time to stick to a $36 million cost estimate. The cost of most publicly funded construction projects rarely remains static. It is likely the university will either have to revise its estimate or change the scope of the project in some way to stay within $36 million.

All in all, it appears the biggest hurdle has been removed from a project that a clear majority of Cape Girardeau residents favored in 1998. Now it's time to move ahead.