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FAU Will Get A New Athletics Building Before Class Of '18 Graduates

Florida Atlantic University just got the biggest grant in the school's history to build a new athletics facility to help its football team grow.

The new building, which will be called The Complex, will have a sports medicine center, a history and tradition hall, an academic center nearby and an indoor practice field.

The Schmidt Family Foundation is giving an initial $16 million to build The Complex.

FAU's cross-country, track, women's soccer, softball and volleyball teams all practice at the 13-year-old facility The Oxley. The new building will give the football team a bigger space, without needing to split the facility's time with so many other sports teams, says FAU's head football coach Charlie Partridge.

Partridge also says student athletes will benefit from having so much under one roof.

"You have the opportunity to provide them with the nutrition they need to compete at this level," said Partridge. "It changes everything for them."

If the football team can put the university on the national stage, says FAU President John Kelly, then the rest of the school will benefit.

"You have millions of people that are watching a university that maybe they never had on their radar screen," Kelly told reporters at a press conference Tuesday. "This is the beginning of what will be a very large capital effort to build this whole university out."

Kelly says the building will be up before this year's freshman class graduates.

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