Pitt to build $188 million biomed tower

In a meeting Monday morning, the Property and Facilities Committee of Pitt’s Board of Trustees… In a meeting Monday morning, the Property and Facilities Committee of Pitt’s Board of Trustees approved the first stage of the plans for a $188 million biomedical research tower.

The tower, which is planned for a site on Fifth Avenue between Darragh and Lothrop streets, would be 10 stories high with a basement, and feature more than 300,000 square feet of floor space, all used exclusively for biomedical research.

According to Vice Chancellor of Public Affairs Robert Hill, the approval for stage one is only a small part of the entire project.

“The preliminary project development may proceed,” he said.

Stage one, the planning stage, can only take up to 2.5 percent of the overall estimated budget. If costs exceed that, Hill said, the University will need to take another look at the plan for the building and then resubmit a proposal.

“But that’s a long time off,” he added.

Planning for the tower, which Hill said began in 1997, has an overall timetable of 10 years.

“We’re hoping that the building will be completed during the fiscal year 2007,” Hill said.

Hill said a facility with 300,000 square feet devoted purely to research would put Pitt among the elite research universities.

“This is a university on the move,” Hill said, adding that Pitt is “a world-class research university.”

“We’re recruiting world-class professors,” he said. “This is what they’re brought here to do and these are the facilities in which they’ll do that work.”