University of Iowa seeks approval for $33.9 million biomedical support facility

University of Iowa officials next week will seek state regents approval for the design and $33.9 million budget of the school's planned Biomedical Research Support Facility.

The project, formerly called the Oakdale Vivarium, will help accommodate the needs for UI health science research for the next 15 years, officials said in the regents agenda information released Thursday. The facility would include biosafety level 1 and 2 vivarium and related support and administrative space. A vivarium is an indoor enclosure for keeping and raising animals and plants for observation or research.

The project would be funded by research indirect cost recoveries, investment income and College of Medicine gifts and earnings.

The plan also calls for the razing of the Oakdale Research Building (built in 1912), the Botany Greenhouse (built in 1973) and Storage Buildings D-G (all built in 1987), to make way for the new facility on the Oakdale campus.

Construction is set to start in late 2013, with completion slated for November 2015.

Also at next week's meeting, UI officials will seek regents approval to purchase a new parking access and revenue control system, at a cost of up to $4.5 million. The UI parking department is self-supporting and the loan to buy the new system will be repaid with earnings over no more than five years.

The new parking access and revenue control system would include equipment and installation, along with the necessary hardware and software, for the entire UI parking system. The department currently operates 89 gates, 30 cashier ticket dispensers, 28 fee computers and 112 card readers in support of 16,000 campus parking spaces.

The new system would be more advanced and provide modern features such as centralized inventory counts, integrated credit card acceptance and web-based parking validations, officials said. It will reduce the use of cash for hourly parking, automate a wide range of transactions and speed up transactions, according to the meeting information.