The Phoenix Biomedical Campus’s Health Sciences Education Building held its grand opening Friday morning in downtown Phoenix on Van Buren and Fourth streets.
The building is a joint venture between the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University and cost $135 million to build. It now houses UA’s colleges of medicine, public health and pharmacy and NAU’s College of Health and Human Services.
The building opened for classes in August and is home to 314 medical, physical therapy and physician’s assistant students but has the capacity to accommodate 1,200 students.
The new building contains three lecture halls, classrooms, anatomy labs, clinical exam rooms, physical therapy rooms and a 13,700-square-foot library.
The building itself is made up of about 250,000 pounds of copper, said Al Bravo, the associate director of public affairs at the Arizona Health Sciences Center in Phoenix. It is also made up of enough concrete to build a sidewalk from Phoenix to Tucson, said Rick Myers, a member of the board of directors of the Arizona Board of Regents.
“This is a promise that we will be here for years to come,” UA President Ann Weaver Hart said.
Weaver said the next step for the university in Phoenix will be the new cancer center, scheduled to break ground in December.
NAU made its first investment in the biomedical campus by moving its College of Health and Human Services to Phoenix, University President John Haeger said.
The university now has almost 4,000 students in Phoenix, Haeger said, and by fall of 2014 Haeger wants to open a doctorate program for occupational therapy on the biomedical campus.
“We’re here to help Arizona meet its healthcare needs,” Haeger said.
Eileen Klein, Gov. Jan Brewer’s chief of staff, said Arizona’s economic future is in medicine, especially with the physician deficit in Arizona right now.
“Once you walk through those doors there’s no doubt where Arizona’s future is going,” Klein said.
The biomedical campus provides students the skills to transform the future of healthcare, provides the people we need and is becoming an intellectual hub that will continue to bring in more investments in healthcare research, Klein said.
Stuart Flynn, dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine—Phoenix, said that this campus should set the standard for the way medicine is practiced in the future and produce graduates to fill physician positions in Arizona.
“Our most important work is to address the needs of the community,” Flynn said.
Myers said this project is an example of universities receiving support needed from the city of Phoenix and the state.
“This is what partnership looks like. This is what collaboration looks like,” Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said. “We are at our best in Arizona when we work together.”
Stanton said this project will bring economic benefits to the city through research opportunities. He added that the building also beautifies downtown.
“You have built a building that will stand the test of time right in the heart of Phoenix,” Stanton said.
Contact the reporter at cgmcfarl@asu.edu
