The U.S. Department of Justice is negotiating ending its 20-year lease of USC’s old business school building, The State reported Monday.
The reason for the decision the Justice Department made to drop the lease has not been made clear, but USC will suffer an annual loss of $5.3 million in revenue as a result.
“We’ll turn it into a win for USC,” Ed Walton, USC’s chief operating officer, told The State.
The lease was supposed to accumulate $106 million for the university and bring over 250 “high paying” jobs to Columbia.
The Executive Office for United States Attorneys was supposed to move from Washington D.C. to USC’s Close-Hipp building by 2017, but the lease would not start until $25 million was spent on upgrades. The Justice Department began negotiating with the school to sever the agreement, even before the upgrades were started.
With 350,000 square feet of classrooms, the Close-Hipp building could be used for added classroom space, however, the building is in need of about $8 million worth of work to replace heating and air-conditioning systems.
According to The State, Walton does not see the situation affecting tuition and does not anticipate that there will be a tuition increase to help cover the lost revenue. Close-Hipp was closed on Oct. 31 and will remain closed until a deal is made with the federal agency, Walton told The State.
The deal was referred to as "one of the most significant developments for the University of South Carolina in decades," in a USC news release.