University of Florida official pushing Jacksonville bioscience center

[thelakelander]

I was out of town when this came out but I don't remember it being discussed here:

JACKSONVILLE â€" The University of Florida could become the driving force behind a bioscience academic research facility in Jacksonville.

The initiative, first presented at a conference at the University of North Florida in 2007, made little progress in the five years since it was introduced. In recent weeks, however, the idea has surfaced again, this time with a focus from the University of Florida, the Jacksonville Civic Council, JaxChamber and Gov. Rick Scott’s life science task force.
Leaders from those groups are collaborating on how to get a research facility up and running, and attracting seed money from venture capitalists will be a linchpin to bring the vision to fruition.

Dr. Daniel Wilson, dean of UF’s College of Medicine, Jacksonville, said a realistic timeline is two to five years, and the budget for the first phase would be around $40 million. It would take about two years to come to an agreement on the specifics of the facility and five years before construction is completed and the building is operational.

“It really comes down to, can we get our act together to ask for some seed money from the state?” he said. “We’re not asking them to build some grandiose, 600-acre thing. But to get this started, I think the University of Florida does have to be the main driver in this because we’re the only research-based university with a presence in the city.”

He said he’s discussed the concept with UF President Bernie Machen, and Machen was supportive of the idea.
“President Machen has told me he thought it was a terrific idea,” Wilson said.
A UF spokesman said Machen was unavailable for comment.

A site hasn’t been identified, but Wilson said he sees the UF & Shands Jacksonville campus in Springfield as a “natural core.”

“I really don’t mean to be exclusive,” he said, “but we have to have something like this [at Shands] to leverage for the city what is already here.”

full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/print-edition/2012/09/21/university-of-florida-official-pushing.html

[Captain Zissou]

I don't know what scale they are talking about, but any investment in the Shands/UF campus is a good thing.  This is one of our areas that we need to build up. 

[thelakelander]

I'm interested to learn more.  An initial investment of $40 million is huge. With that said, I wonder what is going to happen with the old VA Clinic building?

[Tacachale]

This is part of the recommendations of the Healthcare and Bioscience Council of Northeast Florida out at UNF. It's very ambitious and the big stuff like this are very hard to get off the ground. This one would require a lot of state investment, but it would be very cool to see.

[Bill Hoff]

I'm interested to learn more.  An initial investment of $40 million is huge. With that said, I wonder what is going to happen with the old VA Clinic building?

Shands is moving some of their services into the building. The transition has already started, it's going to take a while.

[Ocklawaha]

I'm interested to learn more.  An initial investment of $40 million is huge. With that said, I wonder what is going to happen with the old VA Clinic building?

It would seem a pretty obvious location choice except that the building is terribly time-worn. They would have to gut the entire place and start from scratch with bare walls and floors. As they are already moving things into the building, I doubt this is the plan.

Just to give everyone an idea of what 40,000,000 dollars will buy, take a look at this:

Riviera Health Resort, a World-class Rehabilitation Center, to Open in Coral Gables. So with that kind of money we could get a pretty handsome addition to our building stock.

Moving more medical research is a good first step toward a full blown teaching hospital in Jacksonville. When that hospital happens, it would be easy to imagine the VA opening a full service sister hospital alongside. The Veterans Administration generally only opens new facilities in locations where a teaching-research hospital are located.

Lake City VA Medical Center in Lake City, Florida is a good example of exception to this rule though it's staff is pretty interchangeable with the Gainesville/UF/VA Hospital.  Lake City was opened in 1920 as US Public Health Service Hospital #63. When the government started to care for the WWI veterans, the VA took over the facility in 1924. It expanded its mission to include long term and geriatric care for veterans with the completion of a 120-bed Nursing Home Care Unit in 1985, which was expanded to 240 beds in 1995. More recently, 12,600 square-foot addition was completed in March 2000 on top of the existing Outpatient Clinic. The new space houses two primary care teams with 16 exam rooms.

Would be sweet for our city to snag both a research facility-teaching hospital and a VA Hospital.

[John P]

I was out of town when this came out but I don't remember it being discussed here:

JACKSONVILLE â€" The University of Florida could become the driving force behind a bioscience academic research facility in Jacksonville.

The initiative, first presented at a conference at the University of North Florida in 2007, made little progress in the five years since it was introduced. In recent weeks, however, the idea has surfaced again, this time with a focus from the University of Florida, the Jacksonville Civic Council, JaxChamber and Gov. Rick Scott’s life science task force.
Leaders from those groups are collaborating on how to get a research facility up and running, and attracting seed money from venture capitalists will be a linchpin to bring the vision to fruition.

Dr. Daniel Wilson, dean of UF’s College of Medicine, Jacksonville, said a realistic timeline is two to five years, and the budget for the first phase would be around $40 million. It would take about two years to come to an agreement on the specifics of the facility and five years before construction is completed and the building is operational.

“It really comes down to, can we get our act together to ask for some seed money from the state?” he said. “We’re not asking them to build some grandiose, 600-acre thing. But to get this started, I think the University of Florida does have to be the main driver in this because we’re the only research-based university with a presence in the city.”

He said he’s discussed the concept with UF President Bernie Machen, and Machen was supportive of the idea.
“President Machen has told me he thought it was a terrific idea,” Wilson said.
A UF spokesman said Machen was unavailable for comment.

A site hasn’t been identified, but Wilson said he sees the UF & Shands Jacksonville campus in Springfield as a “natural core.”

“I really don’t mean to be exclusive,” he said, “but we have to have something like this [at Shands] to leverage for the city what is already here.”

full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/print-edition/2012/09/21/university-of-florida-official-pushing.html

On campus? Where would such a building go on campus?

[Tacachale]

^A good bit of their campus hasn't been developed yet, and they could possibly buy more land when it became necessary.