After 16 months of delay, the RecPlex is set to break ground in January 2018, according to Oshkosh Student Association President Austyn Boothe.

Associate Planner of planning services Jeff Nau said the RecPlex is going through a final staging review.

“We have an outside consultant going through [the plans],” Nau said. “I don’t really know how long that is going to take.”

Boothe said after getting the update at Senate, Tuesday, almost everything needed for the RecPlex is done except for one final approval which is supposed to be finished this Friday.

Boothe said there is a lot of frustration with the delays because this project would benefit UW Oshkosh, being the first of its kind in the state.

“It would be a great way to bring students who have a passion for athletics to our University,” Boothe said. “But there is a lot of red tape. Whether it be the University, the state or the city of Oshkosh.”

UWO sophomore Hunter Cook said the RecPlex would be great to have on campus.

“It would give people the option to play more intramural sports or even a place to be active other than cramming into one gym,” Cook said.

The red tape is what’s causing the delay in construction beginning, and OSA doesn’t know what the red tape is, Boothe said.

“Unfortunately, OSA is not getting the behind the scenes of the what the red tape is exactly,” Boothe said. “We found out from the chancellor, who had just found out a couple weeks ago, that the project was still being pushed back.”

Cook said he thinks the campus should update everyone on why [the RecPlex] is or isn’t being built so that people at least know what the idea is and doesn’t think it’s going to be built during the rest of his time here.

Boothe said she’d like there to be more transparency on the issue because she’d like to be able to provide that information to students.

“We do get asked about it a lot and it doesn’t look good when we say ‘I don’t know.’ But we don’t know,” Boothe said. “We aren’t getting the information ourselves so we can’t get it out to students.”

The RecPlex is likely to cause removal of about 50-70 parking spots near Gruenhagen Conference Center, Boothe said.

Boothe said she hopes the RecPlex will be finished since the campus has invested so many resources into it.

“There’s been student dollars collected to pay for this,” Boothe said. “We’ve promoted this heavily on our University. This is something that will make an intramural experience and an athletics experience really, really nice on this campus.”

Boothe said she hopes to see the campus’ current plan finalized and finished within the next year.

“I’d love to see this happen,” Boothe said. “It’s going to benefit students and benefit this campus at the end of the day.”