NEOUCOM adding 'critical' educational, research and student space

Research and graduate education are getting a new home at the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy.

The $42 million project would include a new 78,000-square-foot, three-story building and renovations of existing space. It is part of the first phase of a new 20-year master plan being developed for the Rootstown campus.

Administrators who spent three years examining existing facilities concluded there was a ”critical” need for new educational, research and student space, said John Wray, vice president for finance and administration. The university is at capacity for wet-lab biomedical research space and academic teaching space, in part because newly recruited faculty have laboratory-based research programs.

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In addition, the amount of sponsored research from the National of Institutes of Health and other federal and private sponsors has grown from $6.3 million in 2007 to $10.4 million this year,
NEOUCOM said.

The new research space would enable the university to expand research for treatment of cardiovascular diseases, obesity, diabetes and more. It would provide 60 permanent jobs for researchers and staff members, officials say. ”We are really focused on building a research enterprise,” spokeswoman Cristine Boyd said.

It is a watershed event in the history of the 37-year-old campus, created by legislative fiat in 1973 as a consortium of the University of Akron, Kent State and Youngstown State and located in a field midway between the competing institutions. Cleveland State since has been added to the mix.

The university will finance construction of the research and graduate education project by selling bonds for the first time in its history. The bonds would be retired by existing student tuition and fees, donations and funding via grants.

Eric Fingerhut, chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, is likely to approve NEOUCOM’s request to issue the bonds after a public comment period. The Regents coordinate higher education statewide.

”Barring any unseen circumstances, this should help NEOUCOM grow and support the fast-growing biomedical industry in Ohio,” Fingerhut said in a statement.

While this is only the fourth new building at NEOUCOM in almost two decades, more are expected.

Wray said plans are ”pretty solid” within the next two years for a 25,000-square-foot building devoted totally to classrooms and a 100,000-square-foot health and wellness center with an ancillary medical facility. Current thinking calls for NEOUCOM to build and operate the latter in cooperation with one or more area hospitals.

Plans also call for three more research buildings, each with 60,000 to 70,000 square feet, that would go up every five years or so after the currently proposed facility is completed in 2012.

In addition, the master plan calls for a 15,000-square-foot administration building and, toward the end of the master plan’s timeline, a 35,000-square-foot student union. NEOUCOM has aspects of a student union but the new one would consolidate services.

Wray said cost estimates for many of the projects have not been completed. Plans, he said, will dovetail with changes to academic and research programs.