HSC renovation projects push forward

Construction projects on the Health Science Campus costing a total of $35.5 million include a new College of Pharmacy building that will be open to students for the Fall 2010 semester.

"That's what we are promising," said Vice President of Facilities and Construction Chuck Lehnert.

Other HSC construction projects include renovations to the Block Health Science Building, the construction of a 500-seat auditorium in the Howard L. Collier Building and the renovation of the third floor Intensive Care Unit of the University of Toledo Medical Center.

According to Lehnert, the College of Pharmacy building will primarily include teaching laboratories and classrooms for pharmacy students and is expected to receive LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council upon completion. According to the U.S. Green Building Council Web site, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

"The U.S. Green Building Council is the regulator of the certification process," Lehnert said. "You can be either Gold, Silver or Platinum certified based on the building's level of energy conservation and things like utilizing natural lighting."

The $25 million pharmacy building is located between the Block Health Science Building and the Health Education Building.

Health Science Campus Provost Jeff Gold said all the buildings are expected to receive at least a LEED Silver certification.

"We are not building anything that is below LEED silver status," he said.

According to Gold, the pharmacy building will be used mainly by upper-level pharmacy students.

"We're talking about [Doctor of Pharmacy] students and graduate pharmacy students," he said. "But all students and faculty from every college will be able to utilize this building. We're not excluding anyone."

Gold said upper-graduate pharmacy students' classes are currently taught in Bowman Oddy Laboratories on the Main Campus

"This way they are learning side-by-side with upper-division nursing students and medical students," he said. "We want doctors, pharmacists and nurses to learn together, as they will spend the rest of their career together."

Dean of the College of Pharmacy Johnnie Early said the new building is something the college needed to accommodate the rise in enrollment.

"You can't continue growing and not have your walls grow a little bit too," Early said. "It's going to be a fabulous facility; highly functional and address the shortcomings that we have experienced in Wolfe Hall."

Early said the new building will allow pharmacy students to explore Main Campus as well as HSC.

"It will give [students] a much stronger exposure to patient care," he said. "When you consider the pharmacy schools that are more competitive in receiving research dollars, they are located on Health Science Campuses."

According to Lehnert, the new College of Pharmacy building will utilize "state of the art technology."

"We really build these buildings to be intelligent," he said. "It will know when rooms are occupied to adjust the temperature and lighting. There's a sky light on the first floor and a lot of other natural lighting. There's going to be Smart boards and all of the most advanced technology that has been developed in them."

Within the Howard L. Collier Building, Lehnert said there will be a 500-seat auditorium that can be split into two 250-seat classrooms.

"It has multiple functions," Gold said. "There is one large classroom that can be divided into two smaller classrooms and then one smaller space for more teaching space and breakout classrooms."

Lehnert said the Collier Building is scheduled for completion in July 2010.

The Block Health Science Building, according to Lehnert, will serve as faculty member office space and will be completed sometime in September 2010.

"The space we're building in the building isn't capable of holding labs, but it's capable of holding offices so it made more sense to fill this area with faculty offices," he said. "So we can take the current office space and use it for research labs. It's a more efficient use of the space."

Renovations to the Block Health Science Building will cost $3.5 million.

According to Gold, the area where the renovations are taking place used to be an internal courtyard garden, which will add to the LEED certification of the building because they are utilizing already existing space.

"It wasn't being used except by the local birds," he said. "So if we move all of the offices, conference rooms and administrative space that frees up tons of thousands of space for research laboratories."

The third floor Intensive Care Unit of UTMC will also be renovated to accommodate 28 additional patient beds.

"It will have all touch screen monitors and will be a totally patient centered space," Gold said. "It will have a lot more patient family space and all of the beds will be able to perform functions such as X-rays being to be done in them."

The $7 million floor renovation is set to be complete by January 2011.