Higher Education

The newly renovated Saint Luke's Neuroscience Institute opened in January of 2013 in Kansas City, Mo. The $32 million project was designed by ACI/Boland with J.E. Dunn Construction as general contractor. Integrating research with clinical care, the project provides four dedicated neurological operation rooms, a 13-bed recovery unit, three neurointerventional suites, an 18-bed ICU, and 68 private patient rooms. The duration of construction was one year.

The University of Georgia is planning to build a $35 million facility for the Terry College of Business in Atlanta. The multi-story building will provide classrooms and offices for graduate and undergraduate programs. The project will be built by Hardin Construction. A design firm will be selected in February of 2013. 

The University of California, San Diego broke ground in January of 2013 on the $269 million Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute in La Jolla. Supporting the integration of genetic sequencing technologies into patient diagnosis and treatment, the seven-story, 315,000-sf project will provide collaborative research labs and offices for clinical investigators, informatics researchers, and biomedical scientists. The facility is located near Thornton Hospital, the Moores Cancer Center, the Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center, and the new Jacobs Medical Center.

Washington University School of Medicine opened the $27.5 million Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in south St. Louis in January of 2013. The multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment facility provides medical offices, labs, a linear accelerator, and a chemotherapy infusion suite. The project team for the 37,500-sf center included architect and engineer BSA LifeStructures and general contractor Paric Construction. 

The University of Wollongong is building the $26 million Sustainable Buildings Research Centre in New South Wales, Australia. The 28,000-sf facility will be the first Australian project to be certified by the Living Building Challenge and is expected to attain a six-star rating from the Green Building Council of Australia. Designed by Cox Richardson of Sydney and built by Baulderstone, the net-zero-energy and net-zero-water building will feature an advanced HVAC system, photovoltaics, wind turbines, and a ground source heat exchanger.

Although relatively small in size compared to more established research institutions, the University of New England (UNE) is making tremendous strides in growing its research and scholarship programs and infrastructure despite a shrinking pool of available grant funding. The private university, founded in 1978, began focusing its expansion efforts on biomedical research only within the past decade.

The University of Chicago Medical Center will open the $688 million Center for Care and Discovery in February of 2013. The 10-story, 1.2 million-sf hospital pavilion will support the research and treatment of complex medical conditions. The adjacent Mitchell Hospital will be renovated to provide single-patient rooms. 

The University of Minnesota is expanding and renovating the 152,800-sf Amundson Hall in Minneapolis. The project includes construction of a 41,140-sf addition and 6,676 sf of renovation and infrastructure improvements. Amundson Hall houses the department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, the Industrial Partnership for Research, and the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. Work began on the facility in November of 2012 and completion is expected in fall of 2014.

Tulane University opened the Donna and Paul Flower Hall for Research and Innovation in December of 2012 in New Orleans. Designed by Woodward Design + Build, the four-story, 24,000-sf facility includes 10,000 sf of research space housing 13 interdisciplinary laboratories. The project includes two floors of shell space, the completion of which is not included in the $7.4 million construction cost of the building. The facility will support research in energy, environmental science, gene therapy, and vaccine delivery.

The University of Manchester began building the new Manchester Cancer Research Centre in December of 2012. The $46 million facility will provide advanced laboratories for the development of personalized cancer therapies. The project is created in partnership with Cancer Research UK and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. The general contractor is Capita Symonds. Occupancy is expected in summer of 2014.

Mount Sinai Medical Center opened the $440 million Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine in New York in December of 2012. Outpatient clinics are located on two floors of the 12-story facility with six floors dedicated to research laboratories. The 500,000-sf  Hess Center includes two basement levels housing advanced imaging technologies including a combined MRI/PET, a computed tomography scanner, and a 7 Tesla MRI.

The University of Tennessee completed a $20.9 million facility for the College of Veterinary Medicine in Knoxville in December of 2012. The renovated and expanded Equine and Farm Animal Hospital features surgical suites, a large animal MRI, and an underwater treadmill for equine therapy. The facility also provides isolation stalls with individual air systems and separate exterior doors to prevent exposure. The project comprises 65,000 sf of new construction and 18,700 sf of renovated space. Occupancy will occur in phases in early 2013.

In the on-going drive to advance campus-wide environmental stewardship, the University of Washington's new Molecular Engineering and Sciences Building (MolES) incorporates several unusual strategies for energy savings and sustainability. A 40 percent reduction in the number of air changes lightens the load on the mechanical systems that serve technically challenging laboratories, while operable office windows, phase change material (PCM), and solar chimneys are part of a more "organic" approach to heating and cooling.

The University of Arizona will begin construction in December of 2012 on a $100 million outpatient cancer center located on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus. As a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, the five-story, 220,000-sf building will provide chemotherapy, infusion, radiation oncology, and diagnostic imaging. St.

The University of Michigan is planning to renovate 8,900 sf in Building 22 in the North Campus Research Complex to house the Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory. Consolidating microscopy resources currently dispersed in two separate locations, the $4.38 project will accommodate 12 microscopes for the analysis of materials on an atomic level.