In 2006 the state authorized a $24,950,000 capital project to renovate the 1959 Brehm Animal Sciences Building (113,000 square feet) on the agriculture campus and to raze and rebuild a Food Technology Building, which replaced the 1951 McLeod Hall (36,000 square feet), making an Animal Sciences and Food Sciences Complex. McLeod was razed in 2008. Architects for the project were the Lewis Group and Studio 4 Design. Storm damage in 2011 seriously affected the progress of the project, which was not completed until January 2013. As completed, the 150,000-square-foot complex contained 28 research and teaching laboratories, 60 offices, 8 classrooms, a 148-seat auditorium, and a 900-seat arena.
The 1959 Brehm Animal Science building was designed by Barber and McMurry and built at a cost of $1.1 million. It was dedicated on July 9, with Governor Buford Ellington and President O. S. Williams of Oklahoma State as the principal speakers. At the time it was built, it was the largest building on the agriculture campus and the third largest academic building of the university. In June 1965 the building was named for C. E. Brehm, who served as director of the College of Agriculture, the Agricultural Experiment Station, and the Agricultural Extension Service prior to being named president of UT in 1946.
The large lecture room seating 235 was a unique feature of the new building because it allowed animal carcasses to be rolled into the room from the cooling rooms on an overhead track for students and others to observe and study. The arena portion of Brehm Hall seated approximately two thousand and was designed for the show and sale of livestock. The stalls in the building housed animals for class use and for shows and sales. The first use of the arena was, appropriately, for the J. B. Madden Livestock Judging Contest, a longtime student contest. Brehm Hall was connected to McLeod Hall and was completed in 1951.