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Put your name to history
in new UB-Kaleida Health building
Faculty and staff may sign their names to the last piece of steel to be erected within the UB-Kaleida Health building under construction in downtown Buffalo. Standing next to the beam are Michael Dupre (left) and David Dunn. Photo: JOHN DELLACONTRADA
UB faculty and staff are invited to become part of history by signing a last piece of steel to be erected within the UB-Kaleida Health building under construction in downtown Buffalo.
The ceremonial steel is on display and available for signing until July 10 near the building’s construction site on Goodrich Street, off Michigan Street behind Buffalo General Hospital. Simply stroll by any day of the week, grab the Sharpie pen provided and scribble your name onto a piece of Buffalo’s economic future.
A formal signing ceremony with Kaleida Health President and CEO James R. Kaskie and UB President John B. Simpson is being planned for July 13.
The $291 million facility will house four floors of UB's Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) and the UB Biosciences Incubator, and four floors of Kaleida Health's Global Heart and Vascular Institute.
The building’s construction is a major milestone in the UB 2020 plan to move all five health sciences schools of UB’s Academic Health Center to downtown Buffalo, says David Dunn, vice president for health sciences.
“This project is critical to the future of UB’s Academic Health Center,” Dunn explains. “We will use it as a blueprint again and again as we move the entire Academic Health Center to downtown Buffalo.”
The new building will feature 32 state-of-the-art biosciences labs “to be filled with new investigators—blue-chip faculty—who we’ll recruit to Buffalo,” Dunn says. The university hopes to obtain National Institutes of Health funding to help recruit the researchers.
Cooperation between the Kaleida Health and UB facilities and project management teams has been “outstanding” as construction has progressed, says Michael Dupre, assistant vice president for UB Facilities. The building is on target for completion in 2011.
The combined facility will bring together Kaleida Health physicians and UB researchers in a collaborative effort to deliver state-of-the-art clinical care, produce major breakthroughs on the causes and treatment of vascular disease, and spin off new biotechnology businesses and jobs.
The new building is made possible by a unique partnership between UB, a public university, and Kaleida Health, a private entity. It’s an example of the projects UB regularly could engage in if the state Legislature passes the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act (PHEEIA) proposed by Gov. David Paterson.
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