U. to break ground on $55 mil. med building

The University will begin groundbreaking this spring for a new Biomedical Research Building on top of a utility plant between Blockley Hall and the Nursing Education Building. The $55 million project will provide space for continued growth for the research programs at the Medical School, Vice President for Facilities Management Arthur Gravina said yesterday. According to Michael Hindery, associate executive director of the Medical School, completion of the building is expected in April 1994. The current one-story entrance lobby of Blockley Hall will be demolished in February or March of 1992, and a joint lobby will be built between the two buildings, Gravina said. This will provide Blockley with a more "appropriate entrance," he said. The Human Resources office, which is now in that section of the building, will be relocated to the second floor of Blockley. A Magnetic Resonance Imaging project, which is also housed in that section of the building, will be moved to an undetermined location, Gravina said. Gravina said the Number Five chiller plant, which will be the base for the new research building, was built with expansion possibilities in mind. The building will provide 195,000 square feet of space spread over eight stories, he added. There will also be a one story foyer between the utility plant and the addition, which Gravina said will house mechanical aspects of the building. Hindery said that the building is vital "to the continuing mission of the Medical School to be a first class research teaching institution." New faculty will be recruited over the next two years to work on research programs in the new facility. Hindery said the kind of research that will be conducted will depend on the opportunities that are available. For example, Hindery said six years ago the Medical School would have liked to contribute to AIDS research, but the faculty and space were not available. "Our goal is to give us the flexibility to respond to new initiatives, to new needs," Hindery said. The funding for the new Biomedical Research Center will come from various sources, including money from the individual departments and from the Medical School as well as through fundraising. Hindery said the office of development hopes to raise $20 million through fundraising. The Departments of Medicine, Pathology, Laboratory Medicine, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Anatomy and Human Genetics will be housed there and there will also be programatic space for human gene therapy and the Institute on Aging.

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