University of Missouri, Kansas to build USD 120M medical building

The University of Missouri-Kansas City pulled back the curtain on the design of its largest capital investment to date — its $120 million Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Building in Hospital Hill.

UMKC officials on Tuesday shared new renderings for the six-story, 200,000-square-foot building. Construction is slated to start in 2024 on a university-owned parking lot northeast of 25th and Charlotte streets.

The university heralded the building’s potential to support state-of-the-art education for up-and-coming health care providers, facilitate more interdisciplinary research partnerships and strengthen collaborations with surrounding neighborhoods when it’s anticipated to be finished in 2026.

The new Healthcare Delivery and Innovation Building will be one of a kind,” UMKC Chancellor Mauli Agrawal said in a Tuesday release. “We know of only one other combined medical and dental education building in the nation, and none other that will include what ours will with a unique combination of collaborative programs focused on elevating health care.”

UMKC’s Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Building would update the university’s clinical, research and teaching facilities, which also have drawn more demand recently. The new building will include simulation labs where School of Medicine students can practice essential medical procedures, plus a full-scale operating room and exam rooms for practicing patient communication and care.

The facility also will house the School of Dentistry’s acute dental programs like oral surgery, endodontics and emergency procedures, along with leading-edge pre-doctoral dental clinics; and program space for radiology, lab work and a high-tech dental design lab for producing crowns, bridges and implants.

Rounding out the new medical-dental building are spaces for the UMKC Health Equity Institute, Biomedical Engineering program, Data Science and Analytics Innovation Center and University Health, which will occupy two floors of office space as a clinical partner.

UMKC officials said the Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Building is close to fully funded. The state has appropriated $40 million for the project. The Sunderland foundation contributed $30 million, and the Hall Family foundation donated $15 million. The project also received $10 million in federal funding secured by former U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt.

The medical-dental building is in UMKC’s Health Sciences District, which launched in 2017 with the aim to create a single walkable campus for dentistry, medical, nursing, health studies and pharmacy students, supported by 12 neighboring health care institutions. The building could make the area a major regional academic medical center capable of generating billions of dollars in regional jobs and economic impact, university officials have said.

McCownGordon Construction is the construction manager for UMKC’s new facility. Clark & Enersen and RDG Planning & Design are design partners, with Taliaferro & Browne as civil engineer and Leigh & O’Kane as structural engineer. The Business Journals