The University of Rhode Island broke ground last week on its Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences, a project to which the state’s leading biotech employer, Amgen Inc., has committed $1 million.
The 140,000-square-foot research facility will take two years to build and is expected to cost $60 million. When completed, it will be the largest building on the URI campus and will serve as the cornerstone of a new medical and biotechnology district the university is planning on the northern edge of its Kingston campus.
Construction of the research building will enable URI scientists and students to ramp up ongoing research to understand the causes of cancer, Lyme disease and eastern equine encephalitis, and to develop the next generation of biofuels, URI President Robert L. Carothers said, speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony on March 27.
Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts and URI administrators said the research facility would prepare students to take local high-wage jobs in biotechnology and the life sciences – a growing industry seen as crucial to Rhode Island’s economic fortunes.
“We will look back 25 years from now, and look at what’s happening at this university and the kind of graduates that are coming out of here, the kind of research that’s going on here, the talent that is here, and then we’ll look at what’s going on around the state, and we will say, ‘We did right,’ ” Carcieri said.
The building will be paid for with a $50 million state bond, approved by voters in 2004, and $10 million in private donations, including $1 million pledged by Amgen, which has operated a large facility in West Greenwich since 2002.
“Amgen is a science-based company, and we are truly committed to ensuring science education and scientific literacy around our community,” said Kimball Hall, an Amgen vice president and general manager of Rhode Island operations.
“It is one of our main priorities as a company,” she added, “and I’m very happy to see that it’s also a priority of the University of Rhode Island.”
The five-story, L-shaped Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences will feature separate research and teaching wings, as well as a two-story, 300-seat auditorium and a four-story atrium with a staircase shaped like a double helix, the molecular structure of DNA.
The building will also include design features that will qualify it for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, including an energy-efficient heating and cooling system and a roof partially covered in vegetation to filter pollutants from rainwater and reduce the building’s heating and cooling needs.
Officials at URI already have begun an aggressive fundraising campaign to pay the balance of the building’s price tag and to help fund several other building projects planned as part of a new medical and biotechnology district on 330 acres at the north end of campus, including 125 acres recently purchased from the Town of South Kingstown.
Work to build the center will be followed shortly by construction of a new building for the College of Pharmacy, for which the university hopes to break ground in about a year, Carothers said.
The university plans to follow those buildings with a chemistry building and a nursing building, and eventually plans to build a large research park across the road from the new quadrangle.
