Posted on: Friday, June 22, 2001
UH to request Kaka'ako site for med school
By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer
University of Hawai'i officials today likely will ask the state for 10 acres in Kaka'ako that would be used to build a new medical school and science research park.
Acquiring the land represents one of the first steps in building a new facility for the medical school, which has been on a turnaround since a new dean came on board in late 1999. Officials had once considered closing it after problems with staffing, morale and money seemed to outweigh the importance of having a home for medical research and training in Hawai'i.
The project received $34.75 million in start-up money from the Legislature this past spring for architectural planning, infrastructure and moving businesses off the Kaka'ako site. About $13 million of the money was set aside for planning.
The procedural task of asking the state to turn over the land to UH won preliminary, unanimous approval from the UH Board of Regents at a committee meeting yesterday and is expected to pass today before the full board.
Gov. Ben Cayetano has been one of the leading supporters of the biomedical park.
However, Edwin Cadman, dean of the John A. Burns School of Medicine, must raise an additional $50 million to $70 million in private money to actually start construction on the site.
"We're talking to pharmaceutical companies to interest them in collaborative projects and programs," Cadman said. "They may be able to fund a research building and in return would have the rights of first refusal for the intellectual property the comes out of that building."
As for private capital, he said no single entity is ready to come up with $70 million, but private investors and pharmaceutical companies could enter negotiations for a piece of the project.
The medical school's current building on the Manoa campus was built in 1971. The new campus would house the medical school, Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i and the Pacific Biomedical Research Center, as well as provide leasable research space for biomedical companies and some government medical programs.
Out of 117 medical schools doing research, UH ranked 115th for the amount of federal money it wins from the National Institutes of Health. In 2000, the school won $2.5 million in research grants. That tripled this year, and the school has written grants for an additional $40 million in research.
Cadman estimates that with enough lab space, the medical school, Cancer Center and Biomedical Research Center on the new campus could win $56 million in new research grants and add 1,100 permanent jobs.
"All medical schools that are doing research are self-supporting," Cadman said. "This is big business."
Cadman said he will return to the Legislature next session with the cost of building the biomedical campus — estimated at at least $140 million — and, hopefully, with commitments from private investors.
