Medical college to update campus
By Carol Biliczky, Beacon Journal
The Northeast Ohio Medical University is looking to invest about $130 million to update its Rootstown Township campus.
Officials have broken ground for a research and graduate education building and are planning Neomed’s first student apartments.
The push is on to get much of this done in two years by selling bonds and partnering with private investors or others.
“We’re trying to create a total campus,” said John Wray, vice president of business and finance. “I think that independently none of these [additions] would work without the others.”
Neomed began in the middle of a farm field in 1973 by legislative fiat, a consortium of the University of Akron and Kent and Youngstown state universities. In recent years, it has moved to dramatically expand its programs and enrollment.
The state legislature added Cleveland State to the consortium, which will increase the number of medical students from 500 to 650 in four years.
Neomed also has added a graduate studies college in bioethics, biomedical sciences and more. The 50 students of today are expected to grow to 150 in four years.
The five-year-old College of Pharmacy is expected to grow from 275 students to 300 in four years.
And starting next fall, the campus will be home to the first 71 high school freshmen in a new Bio-Med Science Academy. Enrollment in the high school, which will be administered independently, could reach 375 in four years.
Other programs — among them, dentistry — are being considered, Wray said, and could add 100 students.
All that means that total enrollment, including high school students, could almost double to about 1,550 by 2016. That means that Neomed will need a bigger campus with more amenities, Wray said.
The college has broken ground for the first part of the expansion: a $45 million, 100,000-square-foot research and graduate education building.
The university sold $42 million in bonds and pulled $3 million from its reserves to pay for the classrooms and labs.
The building will have four floors, with the top one left as a shell to allow for expansion. Neomed is seeking an outside investor — possibly a hospital or university — to put up the $4 million needed to finish that floor.
Meanwhile, the second phase of the expansion is just getting under way. It is “extremely complicated” and calls for an “exceptionally demanding” pace of construction over the next 18 months, according to the college’s request for qualifications for potential private partners.
Construction could begin as early as June for a first for the tax-supported medical college: student housing.
Wray said surveys of students indicate that 80 percent would like to live on campus. Now, 20 percent of them live 20 miles away.
“Our goal is to create apartment units that are more upscale, larger than you’d see in a traditional setup,” he said. “If we can save a half-hour of commuting time, that’s an hour of time they can spend studying or sleeping.”
Wray envisions apartments with 300 to 400 beds costing $600 to $700 a month that would open in fall 2013.
The medical college may ask the Portage County Port Authority to issue about $30 million in bonds to initially pay for the project, then transfer the loan to a nonprofit that Neomed is setting up to oversee the apartments.
The nonprofit would cover construction costs through student leases and eventually could sell the housing to the college at a nominal cost.
The medical college also is eyeing a 150,000-square-foot health, wellness and medical education center costing $45 million that would be funded through a blend of mechanisms — selling bonds, a private partnership and user fees.
This facility would include a fitness and rehab center that would become a “central nucleus for campus life and community activity,” according to the medical college.
Rootstown residents and Neomed faculty, staff and students could use the pools, indoor track, rock wall, spa and even a “mindfulness center” for alternative holistic therapies, as would patients referred there for rehab from a Neomed full-service family health center.
That facility would offer patient care, outpatient surgery and diagnostic testing and labs, plus possibly a dental clinic, sports medicine physical therapy and drug and alcohol testing.
The high school bio-med academy also will move into the facility from the main Neomed complex, where it will be housed for its first year.
Finally, the campus expansion could include an external retail complex that could cost $3 million, Wray said.
“We have not done any kind of marketing study, but surely our campus and students would support it,” he said of the eateries he envisions.
Four million dollars also is estimated for campus enhancements such as athletic and soccer fields, track and cross country trail and the like, plus the widening of state Route 44, sidewalks, a new entrance and more, he said.
Neomed will be looking at grants and state funding to help fund some of these, Wray said.
