The University of Arizona and the city of Phoenix broke ground on the university’s newest addition to its Phoenix Biomedical Campus on Thursday, which is expected to propel advances in health care and create hundreds of jobs.
The 10-story, 245,000-square-foot Biosciences Partnership Building, which will be completed November 2016, will focus on research. Dr. Stuart Flynn, the dean of the UA College of Medicine—Phoenix, said the facility is another mark of the university’s advancement and growth in Phoenix.
“I think today just represents another milestone on where we’re heading,” Flynn said.
The $136.1 million facility, to be located near Fillmore Street between Fifth and Seventh streets, is expected to focus on the areas of neurological, cardiovascular, cancer, genomic and nanobioscience research.
Ann Weaver Hart, the president of the University of Arizona, said it was exciting to see the increased presence of the university in downtown Phoenix, and to see the beginning of a facility that will foster research and innovation in health care.
“We’re very, very excited that we will make groundbreaking discoveries, pun intended, in the areas of neuroscience, cardiovascular science and nanoscience, all of which will improve the future for all of us,” Hart said.
Hart emphasized that construction of the new building would not be possible without the university’s partners, especially the city of Phoenix.
“Partnerships are going to be more and more important as we continue to find ways to amplify our professional capacity and our fiscal capacity for the good of all of us,” Hart said. “We’re going to have to change the way we do things and find more and more partners.”
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton echoed Hart’s remarks about the partnerships that made the building possible, calling the expansion of the campus a “team effort.” He said the developments of the campus as a whole surpassed what the city had expected.
“When Phoenix made its initial investment on this campus nearly 15 years ago, we knew, we believed that it would pay dividends for years to come and even then we knew campuses like this were critical for our ability to compete in today’s innovation based economy,” Stanton said.
The Stimulus Plan for Economic and Educational Development bonds funded the building, according to a statement from the university. They were approved by the legislature in 2008 and also paid for the Health Sciences Education Building and other improvements to the Biomedical Campus.
The addition of the building, along with the research that would be conducted inside of it, would not just be a positive addition to Phoenix’s economy, but to that of the entire state, Stanton said.
“The research that’s going to go on in this building is going to be great, not just for our local companies, but for our national, international reputation, and they’ll be able to do great economic development in their communities because of what goes on here,” Stanton said.
The expansion of the University of Arizona downtown, including the Eller MBA programs, creates a “higher-education nucleus,” Stanton said.
“Business students and medical students will have unparalleled opportunities to partner together on exciting projects,” he said. “We need to bring medicine and the business community even closer together.”
The Biosciences Partnership Building will join the downtown Phoenix Biomedical Campus after the University of Arizona Cancer Center at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s is completed in 2015.
Contact the reporter at pkunthar@asu.edu
