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When Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication connects the former Baker University Center with the Radio-Television Building, it will also join five schools scattered across nine buildings.

Greg Shepherd, dean of the Scripps College of Communication, unveiled the college’s plans for the empty former Baker University Center building Feb. 6.

The college, housed in the Radio-Television Building, will expand into the former Baker University Center to centralize its operations. The five-school college, which is spread among nine buildings, will retain E.W. Scripps Hall and Sing Tao House.

The Collaborative, an architectural firm based in Toledo, submitted conceptual drawings that involve renovating a portion of the former Baker University Center, refurbishing the Radio-Television Building and removing a part of old Baker to construct a new section that will connect the two buildings.

“The whole front (of Baker) will be salvaged,” Shepherd said. “We’re going to keep the pretty parts of Baker and more or less gut the insides.”

Shepherd met with the College of Communication faculty and staff Feb. 6 and will set up meetings with the separate schools before giving presentations to the public Spring Quarter.

Shepherd said the next step in the process will be to determine how the estimated $34.4 million project will be funded.

“Currently we have $21 million in capital appropriations, which could still go up or down,” he said. “The question is where does the other $13 million come from?”

Unlike the new Baker, no student general fee money will be used for the project. The money likely will come from private fundraising or state-issued bonds, Shepherd said.

The money also won’t come from the $15 million Scripps Howard Foundation endowment Fall Quarter, which was specified solely for programming. Scripps made it clear that the university should “step up and provide the facilities to match the excellence of the program,” Shepherd said in October.

$30.7 million of the estimated cost will go to the Baker construction and $3.7 million is earmarked for renovations to the Radio-Television Building and Scripps Hall.

The design features a town square on the ground floor, with a coffee shop and newsstand to hold about 80 people. Most of the classrooms and computer laboratories will be located on the highest and lowest levels of the building, with faculty and staff offices on the two floors above the town square.

“We want to maintain the historical and social character of the space,” Shepherd said. “We want to make it so that even if you’re not a communications major, you’ll want to be there.”