Construction may be less visible outside the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute (MCOM+HI), but crews are hard at work on the inside. The 13-story building in the center of downtown Tampa is now fully enclosed, allowing for the progression of interior construction. It has electricity with canned lights and many walls erected, some prepped with paint.
The building is designed to best bring together science and innovative clinical care. It was constructed with 47,000 tons of concrete and nearly 500 miles of rebar. There’s space for 1,800 students, faculty and researchers, with labs available to 31 NIH-funded investigators. Its rooms are modern and convertible for a variety of uses.
"The idea is that eventually we will need fewer lecture halls designed for passing learning, in favor of more adaptable high-tech classrooms designed for small group active learning. This new space will have rich variety of teaching settings, learning technologies, sophisticated patient care simulations and world-class laboratories to best prepare our students for real-world clinical challenges and an ever accelerating pace of research discoveries," said Charles Lockwood, MD, senior vice president for USF Health and dean of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. "We're building for maximum flexibility. The building is not only incredibly functional, it's really a work of art."
The new state-of-the-art hub for medical education and research is located in close proximity to USF Health’s primary teaching hospital, Tampa General Hospital, and its world-class Center for Advanced Medical Learning Simulation (CAMLS) facility. It is a key anchor for Water Street Tampa, a $3 billion real estate development by Strategic Property Partners, the joint venture of Jeff Vinik and Cascade Investments, LLC.
MCOM+HI is slated to have a $56 million annual economic impact, helping attract corporations to Tampa Bay and drive more people downtown. The 395,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to open in late 2019 with Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) courses commencing in January 2020.