FRANKLIN – Construction of a 20,000-square-foot building at the University of Maine’s aquaculture facility on Taunton Bay is expected to begin this summer, according to a university official.

The deadline for receiving construction bids on the project was last week, said Jake Ward, the university’s director of industrial cooperation.

“We’re now getting a designer, so we can finalize plans and begin construction this summer,” Ward said Wednesday.

The building will house tanks with filtration systems used for breeding and cultivating different species of marine fish, Ward said. The overall cost for the building will be approximately $2 million.

The university bought the property at auction in 1999 for $400,000 and has since opened its Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research at the site. The existing buildings on the property had been used by a commercial hatchery before it went out of business earlier that year.

Ward said the university had hoped to be closer to the project’s completion at this point.

“The permitting process took longer than expected, so we’re about a year behind schedule,” he said. Construction of the facility should take about six months to complete, he said.

“It’s a pretty straightforward building,” Ward said. “It’s not all that grandiose.”

The university’s new building will be located to the north of the existing main building, Ward said.

The university now employs six people in Franklin and is likely to hire three or four more when the new building is finished, he said. Halibut and cod are being bred at the site, Ward said, and other cold-water marine species may be cultivated there when the expansion is complete.

The university’s project will be designed and built separately from a U.S. Department of Agriculture aquaculture research facility planned for an abutting property, the university official said.

The federal government intends to spend about $25 million in building marine aquaculture research facilities in Franklin and Orono. Of that amount, $12 million will be spent on the construction of four buildings in Franklin and $13 million on two buildings in Orono, where the main campus of the University of Maine is located. USDA officials have said they expect to have roughly 45 employees, including 14 scientists, working at the two sites.

Hank Parker, regional associate director of USDA’s Agriculture Research Service, said Wednesday that USDA has about $2.5 million for design and planning at the two sites and $3 million for preliminary construction work, which most likely would involve infrastructure improvements in Franklin.

The remaining money needed for construction has not yet been approved by Congress, according to Parker. He said “some portion” of the remaining money is expected to be included in USDA’s 2003 budget, but he declined to speculate how much.

“There are a lot of uncertainties with the war in Iraq and everything else,” Parker said.

The bulk of construction of the USDA facilities likely will not begin until 2004, he said.

Researchers at the USDA and UM facilities are expected to work together in studying the best ways to raise marine life in captivity, but, according to Ward, federal and university scientists will take slightly different approaches in their work.

The university will work with specific commercial businesses and their needs in its research, while USDA will focus on issues and challenges that affect the aquaculture industry as a whole, he said.