UNL Eyes State Fair Park For Fertile Memorial Grounds

Story by Carson Vaughan 

| Published Feb 19, 2008

In response to University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s growing demand for memorials and commemorative monuments, the Board of Regents voted 7-1 Friday to purchase State Fair Park for $130 million to make room for continued memorialization.

In the last year alone, UNL has constructed seven new monuments on its city campus, with an eighth memorial currently under construction just north of the Student Union. According to UNL President J.B. Milliken, demand for memorials is at an all-time high.

“UNL’s greenspace is depleting at an alarming rate,” Milliken said. “Under the current circumstances, I don’t think we had any other choice. Discontinuing the conversion of our campus’s greenspace into concrete cylinders is simply not an option.”

Although acquiring State Fair Park will give the university an additional 251-acre memorial reserve, estimators believe it will cost an additional $31 million to transform the area into a more “memorial-friendly” plot. According to the university’s Board of Regents, however, that cost is minimal compared to the price of letting university alumni be forgotten.

“Tom Osborne, a handful of our alumni and a few others mean very much to us,” said Bob Phares, chair of the Business Affairs Committee of the Board of Regents. “I think I speak for everyone at UNL when I say that no one is more deserving of additional memorials than our old coach.”

Regent Kent Schroeder, representing Nebraska’s sixth district, cast the lone opposing vote. According to Schroeder, purchasing State Fair Park is only a temporary fix. Eventually State Fair Park will also become crowded, he said, and in four to five years the university will be dealing with the same issues.

“Everyone is demanding more memorials, more monuments, more plaques,” Schroeder said. “We need to look at this from the bigger picture. What we really need to ask ourselves is ‘Will the demand for memorials stop for the physical boundaries of State Fair Park?’ And the answer to that is no.”

Plans to construct a memorial near Varner Hall to commemorate the monumental decision made by the Board of Regents are currently underway. Milliken is scheduled for the ribbon cutting tentatively on March 4, 2007.

“The bottom line is this,” Milliken said. “The future of UNL lies within memorials.”