This is almost certainly DOA. First, students and faculty are already lining up to protest it:
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/regio...t-preserve
https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/environmen...t-preserve
https://www.change.org/p/university-of-s...e-preserve
Even Hillsborough County Commissioners are pushing back on it:
https://www.tampabay.com/news/hillsborou...-usf-land/
For anybody who doesn't know, USF has more than 700 acres of completely untouched (with the exception of our golf course) wetlands - essentially more than the size of the entire campus - that runs along a major artery (Fletcher Avenue) for several miles from almost the middle of our campus all the way to the Hillsborough River:
USF has held that land as an area where biology and geoscience faculty and students can conduct research and fought every attempt at using any of it. Way back in the 70's and 80's, Hillsborough County tried to extend a major north-south street (56th Street) to Bruce B. Downs Blvd. and the university refused, effectively screwing up traffic in north Tampa forever - it's impossible to get to anywhere north of Fletcher from 46th Street (the golf course) all the way to Interstate 75.
If the university could repurpose the golf course (there are 81 golf courses within 20 miles of campus) and use about a 250 foot deep swath of Fletcher Ave. fronting land from 46th Street to the Hillsborough River (about 2 miles - about 60 acres of land), they could probably fund anything they wanted and still retain > 600 acres of wetlands, but...
So I wouldn't get your hopes up - some combination of tree huggers and NIMBYs are going to kill anything here. And it's not like Currall's on awesome footing with some of his moves (like killing and unkilling the College of Education, the budget cuts that he refuses to restore and the utter disaster that has been consolidation), so I don't have much confidence in the administration doing what needs to be done here.
USFFan