Colorado leaders plan today to mark the final burst of construction that will transform an old Aurora army base into one of the nation’s largest training grounds for doctors, dentists, nurses and pharmacists.
The ceremony at the University of Colorado’s medical campus – on the site of the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center – marks the start of construction of seven buildings, including a biomedical library, classrooms and research labs.
“It’s a super big deal,” CU Regent Pete Steinhauer said. “We’re quite pleased.”
Cranes jut into the sky from the Aurora campus, now a mess of fresh dirt and construction supplies. Work already has started on six of the seven state-funded buildings, which are scheduled to open in mid-2007.
The university has completed 10 additional building or renovation projects since 2001 with private and state money.
The $2 billion project is the largest medical development project in the country and the “poster child of base closures,” said Jay Gershen, executive vice chancellor of CU-Denver and Health Sciences Center.
The university is able to finish the campus in one major swoop because of a 2003 legislative bill that allowed the state to fund the buildings through innovative lease-purchase agreements, called certificates of participation. After a nearly three-year delay because of a lawsuit challenging the funding, the certificates were sold to investors in December for $202 million.
The trustee that sold the certificates, JPMorgan Chase & Co., owns the buildings and leases them to the university.
The arrangement keeps the state from having to pay the $335.6 million tab all at once, which includes interest paid on the certificates. The state will make 25 years of annual payments of $13.1 million, beginning in 2007.
CU’s dental school, funded privately, opened on the Fitzsimons campus in September. Medical, pharmacy and nursing students – now at the university’s Denver campus at East Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard – will move to the new campus in mid-2007, Gershen said.
Gershen described the health sciences campus as a “university without walls” that will break away from the traditional model of separating students in different disciplines.
Students will take courses that pertain to all of their disciplines, such as ethics, together instead of sticking to their own academic “silos,” Gershen said. And medical, dental and pharmaceutical faculty will collaborate in labs to research cancer, AIDS and heart disease.
“This is really an innovative concept,” Gershen said. “There is no other academic health center in the country that has done away with the silos.”
The Department of Defense gave CU part of the Army base in 1997. The city of Aurora, which owns a larger part of the former base, is creating a bio- science park to attract major biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical-device companies.
Gov. Bill Owens, Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer and CU president Hank Brown are expected to speak at today’s 4 p.m. ceremony.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
