USF Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation

[GOOT]

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/jun...news-breaking/


USF buying downtown Tampa site for medical training center


By SHERRI ACKERMAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 10, 2010

TAMPA - The Tampa City Council agreed to sell a piece of downtown property to the University of South Florida this morning for a high-tech medical training center.

USF will pay about $3.5 million for what is known as the Hart lot, near 102 S. Franklin St., just south of the Fort Brooke Garage. The school plans to start construction by January.

"This is a project of both love and passion and work," said USF medical school dean Stephen Klasko.

The center will make Tampa an international hub for high-tech and robotic surgical training, he said.

"You are a valuable, valuable partner to this community," said council chairman Tom Scott.

Councilwoman Mary Mulhern suggested that USF could also move its pharmacy school downtown, now that Gov. Charlie Crist has vetoed the money to move it to USF Polytechnic in Lakeland. But Klasko didn't address that.

USF has been working for four years to develop the $20 million, 60,000-square-foot Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation, known as CAMLS.

University officials had planned to build it in Tampa Heights, but the property deal fell apart. They also considered Orlando's Medical City.

"We certainly want to thank you for keeping the project here," Scott said.

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio must approve the sale before it can go forward. She has long supported locating the CAMLS project in Tampa.

CAMLS will include an advanced surgical laboratory, where surgeons can learn new techniques and train on new equipment, and a virtual hospital where doctors can practice laparoscopic and other procedures on human simulators. It will also have a 150-seat auditorium with satellite videoconferencing, high-speed Internet access and Wi-Fi capabilities.

Surgeons from around the world will come to CAMLS for training, Klasko said.

The project will create as many as 40 jobs, said Tampa economic development administrator Mark Huey.

"It's also going to create opportunity potentially for businesses to move here who want to be associated with a cutting edge training center," he said. The Tampa Convention Center, two blocks down the street from the CAMLS site, could also use it to attract more health care-related events.

By the time of the 2012 Republican convention in Tampa, CAMLS will be one of Tampa's biggest highlights, Klasko said.

[smiley]

Bet it is 4-5 stories and it has no street retail or interaction. Rather they leave that block empty

[TampaMike]

Of course, we're talking about Tampa here. A city that walks the walk, but doesn't talk the talk. Says it wants to progress forward, but continues to support projects like this that will do nothing for the street level in the city. And considering that they plan to have this open by Summer 2012 (thats what I get from the end), it will likely be around 4 stories. 4 story box with no retail and no purpose in the CBD. And one of Tampa's biggest highlights, please.

[kevinkagy]

This is good news. Bringing USF, even if it is just a small department of the university, to Downtown Tampa is great. What is USF Polytechnic exactly? Is that a proposed separate campus like USF-Saint Pete, or a research facility?

[TampaMike]

It's a seperate campus in the Lakeland area. There's a lot more info in the Lakeland thread in the Florida Sub-forum if you want to read up more on it. I wonder what the plan is now for the HSR station in Lakeland with the veto on the Polytechnic campus.

I'd rather have all this in the USF area. I know that many other universities do this, but why? One of the reason must be not enough room for them universities. And another might be that it's a city university like University of Chicago opening a sub-campus in the city. But USF has plenty of room left for a medical building at the main campus and USF isn't a city university. Maybe I'm just too focused on Tampa getting projects taller than 10 stories built, espicially in this economy.

[Jasonhouse]

If the scale of this project was about 5x bigger, it might be worthwhile... Maybe they can add the pharmacy school there in the 2nd phase, and also move the 'USF Downtown Health Center' there from the Tampa Port Authority HQ.

[SkyDiveJunkee]

USF is all over the place. Were they actually considering the Orlando Medical City as a potential location? Did they forget a little thing called UCF and their new medical school?

[tampasteve]

Originally Posted by SkyDiveJunkee

USF is all over the place. Were they actually considering the Orlando Medical City as a potential location? Did they forget a little thing called UCF and their new medical school?

The Orlando idea was just a ploy used as a bargaining chip for this site if I am not mistaken.

Steve

[GOOT]

I personally like it. Yeah, I like it when tall buildings are built in tampa, but I'm a fan of this.

[Jasonhouse]

^The problem is, this small scale project (just 40 employees, just a few hundred visitors a week) just gobbled up the one block of open land the city had next to its newest streetcar station, and next to an underutilized 5,000 space parking garage. Plus, this should have been viewed from a planning perspective as the southern anchor for the Franklin St mall... The city could have easily sat on this lot for a couple more years and then enticed a developer to build a kick-ass mixed use tower there, by waiving the parking requirements (since there is a huge city owned garage sharing part of the same block, than could easily be connected to on multiple floors for multiple tenants, with short sky bridges, just like how Tampa City Center is connected to the garage on the north end). This would save the developer so much money that the city could have easily made a deal with them to beautify Franklin St and extend the pedestrian mall to Brorein. Such a plan would have gone a long way towards linking downtown's core with the convention center and forum... And since no parking would have been required within the building, its design could be much more flexible than most downtown buildings... A lobby for the uses in the tower (office and hotel would be my suggestion) could have fronted Florida Ave (including space for a hotel drop-off), and 2-3 floors of retail could have fronted Franklin. Heck, even 50-60k sqft of retail space for a 'big box' store (or for USF's facility) could have easily been carved out of the 2nd and 3rd floors of the base of the building, leaving ground floor stalls along the extended pedestrian mall on Franklin St for cafes and boutique stores. This is how it's done in 'real' cities I've visited.

This USF project IS a good development for the city overall, but from a planning perspective, developing it in this location is a HORRIBLE development for downtown, for the streetcar, for the Franklin St mall and ultimately, for the city's taxpayers.

Our city's planning department and top leaders have almost NO vision whatsoever, and we citizens are the ones stuck paying the price every time they screw something else up... Like I always say, poor planning and design always yields poor results.

[HeartofFlorida]

Originally Posted by TampaMike

I wonder what the plan is now for the HSR station in Lakeland with the veto on the Polytechnic campus.

The plan is to proceed minus all the vetoed funding.

Understand, the campus wasn't vetoed, just the extra funding to actually construct buildings in the coming fiscal year once the infrastructure is in place. There's still $35 million available which is enough to begin development of the campus's infrastructure, including $5 million each from Lakeland and Polk County governments that could bring in an additional $10 million in matching funds. There will still be a ground-breaking in July.

This also changes nothing with regard to HSR and the new Polk Parkway interchange and widening near the campus which is already underway. Even with this year's setback, the campus is still expected to be open before HSR. Whether the USF site clears the environmental hurdles remains to be seen but as long as it clears, it will (hopefully) be the station site.

Pace Rd Interchange Overview


Pace Rd Extension looking east away from USFP

[TampaMike]

Looking at the plans for the Medical Center for the Heights, was the additional 126-room hotel requested by the developer or did USF believe it would need that hotel?

[jonknee]

IIRC USF wanted a hotel next door because their customers would be mostly from out of town. Locating it in downtown makes it next door to a couple hotels.

[Jasonhouse]

Yep... 4 hotels within easy walking distance, and a few more accessible by the streetcar, plus several more can be reached by the In-Town Trolley.

This is part of why I considered this such a good site to build something other than this terribly misplaced facility. Its occupant density is WAY too low, given the transportation infrastructure of the site.

[Mrnycegui72]

has anyone seen renderings for this project?

[Jasonhouse]

Don't worry, it will be nothing to look at architecturally speaking.

[Casey]

Beck Group wins $25 million USF CAMLS project

The USF Financing Corp. awarded The Beck Group a contract for design and construction services for a high-tech center for medical learning.

Beck, a full-service builder headquartered in Dallas and with an office in Tampa, was one of multiple firms that bid on the project in a competitive process, said Fell Stubbs, executive director of USF Financing Corp.

The project is not expected to exceed $25 million, with construction set to begin this month and be completed by December 2011, a request for proposals said. USF Financing plans to issue bonds to pay for the project, Stubbs said.

University of South Florida has been trying for years to get traction on its planned Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation. In June, the Tampa City Council agreed to sell city-owned property at the southern end of downtown to USF for $3.5 million.

The size of the planned center has grown since then. A revised RFP issued in August said the project is now about 50 percent larger than originally envisioned, and will total about 80,000 to 90,000 square feet in size.

It will include 55,000 to 60,000 square feet for surgical skills labs, operating suites, lecture halls, exhibition halls, auditoria, robotics lab, virtual hospital/simulation center, research and innovations lab on the first two floors of the facility for the CAMLS project. New to the project is another 25,000 to 30,000 square feet of office and general classroom space on an additional floor, most likely the third floor of the facility, for the USF/USF Health Academic Program, the RFP said.

The academic program will serve adult learners in USF Health’s graduate biomedical degree programs, with evening classes in a convenient downtown location, the RFP said.

The USF Health Office of Continuing Professional Development will provide on-site management for CAMLS, a training and research facility expected to attract surgeons and health care professionals from around the world.

http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tamp...l?surround=lfn

[GOOT]

It's really small but there's a picture of a rendering on here.

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/U...id=bX7BmVGb4hI

[smiley]

What a piece of crap - another Iorio vision.

[Jasonhouse]

I've seen better renders of it than that... But trust me, when it comes to the street environment, the project S-U-C-K-S.

Imo, this project is still an EGREGIOUS underuse of that parcel.