BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – A total of $101 million to renovate the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on the LSU campus was approved by Louisiana lawmakers in the state budget.
National championship-winning LSU women’s basketball head coach Kim Mulkey pressed for funds investing in the PMAC at a Baton Rouge Rotary club meeting in April. Meanwhile, Gov. John Bel Edwards had his sights set on getting funding to improve another building on the university’s campus — the library.
Edwards didn’t blame Mulkey for wanting “the best possible basketball arena,” but said a new library should be a bigger priority. LSU professor Bob Mann agreed with the governor as the main campus library currently has tarps covering books and trashcans collecting water.
On Thursday lawmakers also approved a total of $152,754,349 in the state budget for the LSU Library.
LSU President William Tate IV thanked Edwards and lawmakers for choosing to invest in LSU in a video on Twitter, saying, “We greatly appreciate your support. Thank you very much.”
The Louisiana legislature passed the state’s operating budget with minutes to spare on Thursday, June 8.
