The University of Utah is eager to snatch up a piece of property that recently has become available at the edge of its campus.

And on Friday, the school got state approval to bid up to $21 million to get it.

“We rarely see blocks of land come up like this,” U. President Taylor Randall told the Utah Board of Higher Education on Friday. at its monthly meeting.

The property is located at a coveted spot in Salt Lake City, at the corner of Guardsman Way and Sunnyside Avenue. It sits on the southern edge of the U.’s campus, near its new sports field house and by its research operations.

That’s where the Carmen B. Pingree Autism Center of Learning has been operating. The center, at 780 S. Guardsman Way, announced this spring that it plans to relocate after 25 years to a new location on the west side of Salt Lake County, closer to where most of the 80 children it serves live.

Julie Winn, the vice president of children, youth, and family services at Valley Behavioral Health — which oversees the autism center — previously told KSL News that the move won’t happen until 2028, but noted in May that the process had begun to sell the property.

The U. told the board Friday that bids are now open for those parcels, including the existing building and about 5.3 acres of land.

But first, the school needed the board’s approval, because the U. wanted to dip into the legislative-appropriated money it’s allotted for capital projects to do it.

The Legislature created that funding pool in 2019 so schools would no longer need to come to the Capitol each session to compete for money for buildings.

Even after the bid (and another U. request to update the Marriott Library’s archives), the school will still have about $22 million left in its balance for future capital projects.

Randall said he is not sure what the school would use the building for if it wins the bid. “There are a number of uses we could obviously place on this site,” he said.

But it’s “strategic,” he noted, to grab the prime real estate now as the U. continues to expand with few options around its landlocked and mountain-hemmed campus.

“We get really excited when we see vacant blocks of land that we can use for the future,” Randall said.

The latest bid comes after the U. recently finished a historic property transfer this summer, receiving the final 50 acres of Fort Douglas after the U.S. Army Reserve agreed to move out. The school has said it plans to use that space for more student dorms and office buildings, as it balances to preserve the site’s military legacy.

It is part of Randall’s “College Town Magic” vision, where he wants to transform the U. into more of a destination than a commuter campus.

The excitement comes as the school looks to get ahead of two major financial challenges: projected declines in both its operating margin and student enrollment.

The U. anticipates a budget of $10.6 billion for fiscal 2027, but its chief financial officer says expenses are currently outpacing revenues in “a trajectory that is not sustainable over the long term.”

U. leadership has said it needs to operate more efficiently and use its resources better. That includes plans to lay off up to 855 staff members at the direction of two national consulting firms, as well as plans to scale back retirement benefits for new hires.

The school has also said it will close its satellite campus in Sandy.