The facility will house a triple-function performance hall and provide a permanent home for Ball State's nationally known music engineering technology program.

"The main hall will hold 600 seats and serve as a rehearsal, performance and recording hall," said Peter McAllister, interim director for the School of Music. "The hall also features the ability to control the reverberation, which is the number of seconds the sound stays in the room after a note is played-resulting in a richer sound."

In addition to the main hall, the building will have two smaller performance/rehearsal halls, one each for choral and instrumental performances. The halls will each have 75-100 seats.

The building's second floor will hold the Music Engineering Technology (MET) Studios. Ball State is one of only a handful of universities in the nation that offers a music engineering technology program.

The highly selective and rigorous MET program combines courses in music, physics and math, which together provide the skills needed to work in a music industry that is creating more and more digitally mastered music.

The program is located in a house along Bethel Avenue near the football stadium. This building does not meet technical specifications for the ongoing work by music students and faculty members, according to McAllister.

"It will be great to have that program right across the street from the Hargreaves Music Building giving all our students and faculty easier access," said McAllister. "It will also allow the rest of the campus community to see what the students in this program accomplish."

The building, which will contain 73,000-square-feet for academic use, will also provide additional practice rooms and faculty studios where music students can take lessons, said McAllister.

The $21 million facility is being funded through state appropriations and will be finished in mid-2004.

Construction on the project was delayed last fall after contractors' bids came in over budget. While the building's size was kept the same, some of its exterior and interior details were simplified to fit within the project's budget, said Greg Graham, assistant director of facilities planning.

Architects for the project are CSO Architects, Indianapolis and Michael Dennis and Associates, Boston. The contractor is Weigand Construction, Fort Wayne.

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact McAllister at pmcallis@bsu.edu or (765) 285-5400.)