Northern Illinois University officials announced Wednesday that the campus building where a gunman killed five students February 14, then committed suicide would be demolished and replaced.

Cole Hall, a huge classroom building and the site of the shooting, will be completely demolished and replaced by a classroom building featuring high-tech facilities for students, the New York Times reported. The new building will be named Memorial Hall and will hold classrooms and several auditoriums.

The demolition could begin this spring, and construction on the new building is expected to begin next summer, NIU representative Melanie Magara said according to the same source. “Symbolically, the gesture is that we are moving on and we are healing. And we are doing so in such a way that hopefully adds to the student experience,” she added.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich said he would push for state funding of nearly $40 million to pay for the demolition and rebuilding project.

“I’m calling on the Legislature to pass this appropriation immediately so that work can begin immediately. We are committing the funds needed to build Memorial Hall, to replace Cole Hall, a building now burdened by tragedy and loss. We will tear that building down, not to erase the memory of what happened, but to remind us that the human spirit, the will to learn, to build, to grow, to give back – that spirit lives,” he said during a news conference in DeKalb outside the shooting site.

The idea of erasing the past was welcomed by NIU President John Peters, who said that many students urged him to push for the building’s removal to “consecrate” the site, following the shootings.

“I talked to a lot of people, and very early on I made the decision that we had to raze that, we had to demolish that building and replace it with something fitting, something fitting our needs and as a memorial,” Peters said quoted by the Chicago Tribune.

Former graduate student Steven Kazmierczak, carrying at least four guns, fired dozens of shots into a geology class on Valentine’s Day, killing five and wounding at least 16 people. Then he turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.