DENVER -- State legislators pulled $37.5 million in financing earmarked to help build a science building on the Auraria campus that has already broken ground.

The move could mean the $120 million facility will not be built, and the campus will be scarred by a giant hole in the ground.

The state's Joint Budget Committee pulled the financing Thursday because of new, lower-budget estimates for state construction projects.

State Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, who chairs the Appropriations and Joint Budget Committees, told the paper the money is unlikely to be reinstated.

"What we have clearly seen (is) we are not immune to the forces in the national economy," Buescher said. "And in all likelihood, things are going to get worse before they get better. At the end of day, everyone wants money from the state. Can we spend money that we don't have? Absolutely not."

Construction began in December on the five-story, 181,000- square-foot science Auraria Campus Science Building with construction costs estimated at $111 million.

The building would be shared by the University of Colorado at Denver, Community College of Denver and Metro State College on the Auraria campus adjacent to downtown Denver.

"I'm well aware of the situation," University of Colorado President Bruce Benson told the Rocky Mountain News Friday afternoon. "It is really critical that we get the financing reinstated and that this building is completed. Right now, it is just a hole in the ground."

Benson said the current science building is so unsafe that pregnant women are advised not to take classes there because of fumes from science experiments.

"This building is absolutely key to our ability to support where our economy is going to get the science-based manpower that we need," Stephen Jordan, president of Metro State College, said.

Tami Door, president and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, said the downtown business community is a strong opponent of pulling the funding.

"It is a business issue as much as it is a higher-education issue," Door said. "It was a major investment and now the financing promised is 100 percent gone."