HSC campus in midst of a building boom

In the memorable words of a prizefight announcer, "Ladies and gentlemen, let's get ready to rummmm-blllllle!!!"

In this case, the rumbling won't come from a boxing ring surrounded by a throng of spectators, but jackhammers, power saws and pile drivers set to begin construction on a new building close to the heart of the Health Science Center.

When it's completed in early 2009, the six-story, $94 million Biomedical Sciences Building will be an architecturally stunning anchor on the western end of the plaza encircled by the McKnight Brain Institute, the Academic Research Building, the recently face-lifted Communicore and the HPNP Building. But until then, it's likely to be an inconvenience, and occasionally a disruptive force, in the life of the HSC.

The BMSB, as it's called, is just one of a spate of buildings either under way or planned for the near future that represent a building boom for the health sciences. A quick rundown:

• Faculty and staff have just occupied the Cancer and Genetics Research Complex.

• Work is under way on a nanoscience building ''“ which has a significant health science presence ''“ just up the hill on Center Drive.

• A building to house the newly created Emerging Pathogens Institute should get started next summer.

• Shands is building a new patient tower focused on cancer south of Archer Road and is partnering with the College of Medicine to build an outpatient surgery center behind the Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine Institute.

• The College of Veterinary Medicine is completing plans for a building that will include a small animal teaching hospital.

• Before the decade is out, HSC leaders hope to get started on a state-of-the-art facility that will replace the Communicore as the center of educational activities and the home of the HSC Libraries.

Building boom? Miles Albertson, associate director of facilities planning and construction at the Health Science Center, agreed that the pace of building has picked up over a three- to five-year period, particularly for research buildings. That pace is consistent with a strategic vision of the future prominence of UF's research effort, according to Win Phillips, D.Sc., the university's vice president for research.

"UF is building an unprecedented number of interdisciplinary research buildings," he said. "From cancer and genetics to nanoscience and from basic biological sciences to emerging pathogens, UF will be at the forefront and have forward-looking programs to conduct cutting-edge research. This expansion of research facilities will be a cornerstone of UF's future in research, helping attract and facilitate the work of world-leading faculty."

Of all those projects, none is likely to be more daunting than the BMSB. Construction crews have already begun preparing the site for the new building ''“ the loading dock abutted by the Communicore and the Basic Sciences Building. Through the first of the year, they will be fencing off the site, moving the northbound bus stop on Center Drive and relocating existing underground utilities.

The first noisy activity will occur in March and continue through June, when workers begin demolishing the concrete loading dock, driving piles to shore up adjacent walls and compacting soil.

"That's the activity that's going to be most disruptive to the university because it's going to be noisy and it's going to be messy," said Lorne Bazzle, a construction superintendent with Whiting-Turner, the construction manager, at a kind of town meeting on the project held in September.

Frank Javaheri, the university's point person in managing the BMSB effort, said "This is a very challenging project. It's an infill project, between five active occupied buildings."

The proximity of those buildings means that Javaheri and others will be working diligently to mitigate the effects of noise, vibration, utility interruptions and detours. But he concedes there's a certain amount of unpleasantness that can't entirely be avoided.

"Noise is noise," he said. "We can't stop that, obviously."

Those negative effects will diminish when the frame of the building starts going up this summer. Moreover, a separate project to replace chilled water pipes that has disrupted the plaza for several months is slated to conclude in March.

In the end, when the building is completed in early 2009, the result should be worth any temporary irritation. The design features lots of glass on the north and west facades, a handsome two-story glass-walled atrium on the ground floor and exterior improvements to adjacent no-man's-land areas like the walkways and loading dock on the west side of the Communicore.

"It's a building in massing and content and materials that really fits in, and we think it will be a good neighbor to those around it," said Dominick P. Roveto, an architect with Ellenzweig Associates, which helped design the building with a second firm, Hunton Brady.

The nearly 90,000 - square - feet of research space will be divided among three major users. They include a burgeoning Biomedical Engineering program, Animal Care Services and strategically important medical research programs in neuroscience, autoimmune diseases and stem cell biology.

That extra laboratory area - plus what will be provided by nanoscience and emerging pathogens - will make a significant dent in the shortage of dedicated research space that has been a primary focus of Senior Vice President for Health Affairs Doug Barrett, who says his focus has already shifted to meeting the educational and clinical space needs of the health center colleges.

"Over the past five years, we have attacked the single biggest limitation to research growth - a serious shortage of laboratory and research space within the Health Science Center," Barrett said. With what's on the drawing board, he said, "we will have the facilities to catalyze real growth in our research capabilities."

The building will also house a large teaching laboratory dedicated to exposing gifted undergraduates to cutting-edge life sciences research through the university's partnership with the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

That ground floor lab opens onto an attractive lobby fronted with a soaring glass façade that marks the main entrance to the building. At the rear of the BMSB, just below the elevated walk leading to the Sun Terrace, a patio with plantings, tables and an overhead trellis will provide a shady spot for people to meet and mingle.

Such "architectural amenities," said Albertson, have thankfully become the norm for new buildings on campus. Recent projects - think the Brain Institute and the HPNP Complex - are a far cry from the featureless, no-frills structures built in the 1970s, when most UF construction was managed by the Division of General Services in Tallahassee.

"We didn't have consistent campus standards that governed aesthetic appearance," said Albertson of that era. "Today, through UF's Board of Trustees and administration, we manage all that construction ourselves and control the standards that we live by."

That aesthetic sensibility is inconsistent with the existing Communicore loading dock, which will be gutted and reconfigured by the BMSB. Trucks will still make deliveries to the new building, but the delivery area will be disguised and larger, 18-wheel trucks will be handled exclusively by the loading dock at the dentistry building. Indeed, the BMSB is the first step in a long-term effort to beautify the area along Center Drive.

Said Albertson, "We are cosmetically upgrading the west face of the Health Science Center."

Despite its good looks, the new building still represents an efficient use of resources. The wet lab areas have the open design now in vogue, prized for their flexibility.

"We're using every square inch of the footprint, maximizing the space available for research," Roveto said.

The project also incorporates a long-sought capability of the HSC administration: an emergency backup generator to power critical services during power outages. And the entire project will be coupled with a badly needed renovation of the basement of the Communicore, where about half of the space will essentially be gutted and rebuilt. Existing biosafety Level 3 labs will be expanded, but will be off-line for most of the 10-month project.

All that progress comes with a price tag, and unfortunately it's been going up over the last four or five years. Albertson said the construction sector is experiencing a "cost explosion for labor, materials - everything."

The reasons for the inflation are as exotic as competition from the economic boom in China and as basic as the price of gas. But the effects are dramatic. For example, Cancer-Genetics, at 250,000 gross-square feet, is nearly half again as large as the BMSB but will wind up costing about $8 million less, even though the buildings are otherwise comparable.

Despite the high costs of construction, university officials are forging ahead to meet their ambitious goals. And while hard hats and earplugs may be standard academic regalia for a few months, it will all be over soon. Until the next building.

For a schedule of construction activities and more details about various projects, visit www.facilities.ufl.edu.

At a glance: other current projects

Project: Nanoscience Institute for Medical and Engineering Technology

Square feet: +70,000

Estimated cost: $39 million

Completion date: December 2007

Comment: Will establish and maintain state-of-the-art fabrication and characterization facilities for leading-edge research in nanoscale science, nanotechnology and nanomedicine.

Project: Emerging Pathogens Institute facility

Square feet: 100,000

Estimated Cost: $55 million

Completion date: Early 2009

Site: Undetermined, but likely west of Cancer-Genetics

Comment: Various College of Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, CLAS and IFAS programs will jointly use a common facility to pursue research initiatives that will focus not only on human diseases but plant an animal pathogens that could directly or indirectly affect human health as well.