New roundabout opens on University of Iowa health sciences campus

IOWA CITY — Nearly a year after crews began work on the first new road on the University of Iowa campus in more than a decade — pouring pavement and removing 126 trees to make space for the 1,500-foot artery — a roundabout portion of the project is complete and began welcoming traffic Wednesday morning.

The roundabout is part of a $17.5 million project to connect Newton Road with the University of Iowa Health Care fountain entrance — which sits across from Kinnick Stadium and serves as a key transportation hub for patients, visitors and employees.

The infrastructure aims to set the stage for a new adult inpatient tower — which Iowa Board of Regent documents have indicated could cost more than $1 billion and encompass 842,000 square feet, making it 66 percent bigger than the seven-year-old UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital.

Because both Hospital Parking Ramp 1 and the Wendell Johnson Speech and Hearing Center must come down to make way for a new tower, the university needed the new road to ensure efficient access to the main health care campus through what will be years of construction.

While the roundabout debuted Wednesday, work on the new road will continue through spring and summer, according to the UI Office of Strategic Communication. The sidewalk along Newton Road is expected to be reinstalled early next year.

Next to the roundabout is a new bus interchange, accommodating up to five buses at a time and allowing riders to “easily identify which direction a bus is traveling.”

“Bus service for Cambus and city buses to the new interchange and the existing VA Hospital and Hardin Library stops will resume by Dec. 23,” according to UI communications, noting the project will allow the university to “consider improvements for bicycling and walking paths in the area.”

The $2.4 billion UI Health Care enterprise in the 2024 budget year measured an average of 2.78 million annual patient encounters across its growing swath of campuses and clinics — reporting a goal to increase its patient capacity 10 percent by 2027.

Its clinical enterprise comprises nearly 20,000 staff members — including more than 1,200 doctors and dentists, nearly 800 resident and fellow physicians, and more than 5,300 members of its nursing staff.

In addition to the new inpatient tower — targeted to include multiple floors of 48-bed inpatient units — UIHC earlier this year bought the former Mercy Iowa City through a bankruptcy auction, maintaining it as a new downtown campus. And, in the coming months, it will open a new $525.6 million hospital in North Liberty.

UIHC also is building out floors on its Children’s Hospital, expanding its main emergency room, renovating its labor and delivery space and building other new facilities across its health and sciences campus.

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