University of Iowa pursuing $250M ‘health sciences’ building

IOWA CITY — Continuing its construction boom involving more than $1 billion in new and renovated facilities, University of Iowa Health Care next week will seek Board of Regents approval to spend $249 million on a new 263,000-square-foot “Health Sciences Academic Building.”

The new six-story academic facility — realizing another item on UIHC’s “10-year modernization plan” unveiled last year — will house a trio of nationally-esteemed departments central the UI health campus: Communication Sciences and Disorders; Health and Human Physiology; and Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science.

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The west side project — planned behind Slater Residence Hall — will encourage cross-department collaboration while also expanding the UI inventory of “modern general assignment classrooms,” according to regent documents.

“All three programs support the training of Iowa’s future health care workforce and have demand for program growth, which is not supported by their current facilities,” according to the board request.

All three departments currently sit in “aged facilities, which are not optimized to their current needs or projected growth” and — for that reason — are slated to be either razed or repurposed.

The Communication Sciences and Disorders department, for example, will move from the 56-year-old Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Center, which must come down to make way for a new 842,000-gross-square-foot inpatient tower.

Though administrators haven’t released exact size and budget details for the tower, UIHC’s five-year capital plan has it spending $620.9 million on the new “North Inpatient Tower” between 2024 and 2028. That doesn’t include money already spent and to be spent after 2028 on the tower, which will nearly double the size of the 469,000-square-foot, $525.6 million hospital UIHC is building in North Liberty.

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The new tower also will dwarf a 507,000-square-foot UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital that opened in 2017 and saw its price tag balloon from $270.8 million to up to $450 million.

The UI Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences department, once its new home is ready, will move out of the Medical Education Building — which will become the site of a future, separate health sciences research facility a block north of the main hospital.

The Health and Human Physiology department will relocate from the Field House — with its vacated space tapped for “other Field House occupants.”

More major building projects in the works

Next week’s UIHC ask to spend another quarter-billion dollars expanding its health sciences operation comes two months after the Board of Regents in April granted UI permission to proceed with $185 million in health care and medicine-related projects — including a $37 million expansion of its emergency department.

Other projects in the works include a $95 million two-floor addition to UIHC’s existing inpatient tower; an $8 million conversation of its south wing for more beds; a $2.3 million “ophthalmology simulation lab” on Parking Ramp 4’s lower level; and a $49 million expanded neonatal intensive care unit on the seventh floor of its Children’s Hospital.

To enable construction of its new patient tower, the university is building a $75 million West Campus Parking Ramp and spending $1 million to raze the South Quadrangle Building and Price Alliance Center — which sit on the site of the proposed new Health Sciences Academic Building.

Removing those two buildings this summer — and later the speech and hearing center — is expected to save the university $11.5 million in deferred maintenance costs.

Given the new academic building will house programs currently occupying buildings that need to come down, UI officials are characterizing it as an “enabling project for construction of the new UIHC inpatient bed tower” — which will help UIHC meet its expected need for 1,272 inpatient beds by 2031, which is 424 more than it had in 2021.

Building could be complete by summer 2026

A construction timeline for the new academic building has work starting on the Communication Sciences and Disorders wing this summer and wrapping in the summer of 2025, after which work will begin for the other departments and classrooms — with final completion expected in summer 2026.

UIHC plans to pay for the building with hospital revenue, investment income, and debt.

“Private philanthropy would also be pursued to support the project,” according to regent documents.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com