Mitch Perry
One of the big winners out of last week’s budget signing by Gov. Rick Scott was the University of South Florida.
It received $12 million in funding for its Kate Tiedemann College of Business building on its St. Petersburg campus, and for the $17 million it received toward the construction of the Morsani College of Medicine building to be built in Tampa developer Jeff Vinik‘s $1 billion project in the Channelside area.
USF intends to house two buildings in the 1 acre of prime real estate Vinik offered them: the Morsani College of Medicine, and the USF Heart Health Institute. However the Heart Institute was shut out for the $15.75 million it sought.
“We consider it great news,” said Mark Walsh, USF’s executive director of university partnerships, about garnering the money for the Morsani building to be located at Channelside Drive and Meridian Avenue. “Probably the biggest hurdle was getting Morsani to the point where we could begin moving on it, and that is what our local legislators came through for and the governor approved,” Walsh said. “We’re very grateful, so we this thing as right on schedule.”
On schedule for USF means continuing to raise money privately as well as to ultimately receive a total of $62 million in state funding during the next several legislative cycles.
Although originally projected to stand side by side, Walsh said the buildings will be stacked one on the other as a single facility. USF officials project about 600 to 700 medical school students will work from of the building, “and there may be additional students from other USF Health programs,” USF spokesman Adam Freeman said.
In February, the state Board of Governors approved USF’s request to build a new USF Health medical school and heart institute in downtown Tampa. Walsh said officials will have to go back before the BOG in September, but said that’s to get academic approval, and not for more funding. “We will submit that for a final documentation approval for them to be able to open a new education site in downtown,” he said.
Walsh said that when USF President Judy Genshaft and other USF officials went before the Board of Governors this year, they committed to raise $41 million in private donations that would supplement the cost of the downtown project. About $18 million of that has been raised, and he said, “We have a lot of other potential donors who I think wanted to wait to see what happened in the Legislative Session, but we feel pretty good that we can raise that amount of money as long as it appears the project is moving forward, which now we have.”
No one is more ecstatic about the ultimate move by USF than Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who fired off a statement last week: “The new school will anchor the new development set to transform our southern downtown waterfront. Students, researchers and medical professionals will now have immediate access to Tampa General Hospital in addition to the amenities that downtown has to offer.”
Organizers with Vinik’s team recently said they hope to start work on roads, plumbing and other infrastructure for the project this summer.
If all goes well with USF’s funding, the Morsani College of Medicine and the Heart Health Institute will be up and running by the fall of 2018.
While the governor approved the $17 million for USF, he did the exact opposite for a plan for a downtown Orlando campus for the University of Central Florida, in what appeared to be rebuke to Senate President Andy Gardiner. The $15 million project had already been approved by lawmakers when Scott vetoed it last week. Gardiner led the Senate in attempting to pass Medicaid expansion, a project vehemently opposed by the Florida House and Scott.
“It cost Central Florida a lot of projects. Just about everything important to the Senate president got vetoed,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said last week of Scott vetoing $40 million of projects in the Orlando area.
