The University Square Learning Center, also referred to as the “Highway 434 Project,” may see ground broken sometime this year.

The enormous educational park project, coined by Parish President Kevin Davis as a model for the entire country, will occupy over 50 acres of land along Louisiana Highway 434 north of Lacombe.

The park will feature four universities, the University of New Orleans, Southeastern Louisiana University, Louisiana Technical College and Delgado Community College, and a St. Tammany Parish high school all on the same campus, a feat never attempted before in the nation’s history, Davis said recently. The exact cost of the project is estimated at $65 million with $40 million for the university buildings and $25 million for the high school, but those numbers are the predominate factor holding up the construction, Suzanne Parsons Stymiest with the parish’s Department of Cultural and Governmental Affairs said.

She said the Board of Regents and officials with the governor’s office are reviewing the numbers to figure out how much backing the state will provide. But other than that, Stymiest said details are pretty much ironed out and she expects construction to begin sometime this coming year.

“We’re working on the final details and hopefully we’re going to have answers very soon,” she said.

The education park was thought up several years ago but Katrina postponed plans by several years, Stymiest said.

Weyerhaeuser Real Estate Development Co. donated the land for the park.

Aside from providing satellite campuses for all of the listed universities, the center will also provide high school students an opportunity to become involved in college vocational courses before graduating.

Instead of developing advanced course programs at each high school around the parish, school officials decided it would be more efficient and economical to implant a separate school for the arts, science and technology amid the four universities. There, students would be transported from their high schools to participate in gifted or college classes.

Specifics concerning the high school are still being determined.