City council votes against rezoning residential area near hospital
1 August 2023
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — The Wichita City Council has approved a spot in the heart of downtown Wichita for a new biomedical campus for the area.
On Tuesday, the Council voted 6-0 in favor of two tracts of land at 200 S. Broadway and 214 S. Topeka. The Topeka address is the home of the current Wichita Transit Center. The center will move to Delano. The Broadway address is a parking lot at the southeast corner of Broadway and William.
The City of Wichita will sell or lease the land for Wichita State University and the University of Kansas to build a 471,000-square-foot health sciences center.
“Both KU and WSU have conducted a rigorous site selection exercise and have identified the two sites,” Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson told the Council.
The WSU/KU Wichita Biomedical Campus project will cost $300 million. So far, $205 million has been raised.
Construction is expected to start early next year and be completed sometime in 2026.
The biomedical campus will unite WSU’s College of Health Professions, WSU Tech’s Health Professions program and Wichita campuses of KU School of Medicine and KU School of Pharmacy at one location. There will be shared spaces for advanced laboratories, clinical research and technology.
“This project is truly going to be transformational, not only for downtown but for the city and the region,” Anderson said.
He said the City’s commitment to the project is selling or leasing the land and providing parking.
“We’ll continue to work alongside KU and WSU as the project becomes more prevalent and more fine-tuned, and that way, we’ll know and understand the size, scope and obligation as regards to parking,” Anderson said.
The schools say initially, about 3,000 students and 200 faculty and staff will be housed at the center, with opportunities for growth in existing and new programs.
WSU President Dr. Rick Muma said that when the Wichita Biomedical Campus opens, it will be nothing short of transformational for health care and health care education in Kansas.
“In my career as a physician assistant, I learned and researched at one of the largest health science centers in the nation, The Texas Medical Center in Houston; and I experienced the breakthroughs and innovations that are borne from the proximity and energy fostered in that type of facility,” Muma said. “Pooling the collective resources and successes of Wichita State, WSU Tech, and the University of Kansas will ultimately improve the way health care professionals are educated; and, in turn, improve patient outcomes for all Kansans.”
Planners say the campus will include state-of-the-art simulation centers, standardized patient exam rooms, and modern learning facilities.
“This new facility, along with the combined strengths of the KU and Wichita State University professional health programs, means that future students will benefit from the latest technologies and teaching modalities,” said Dr. Robert D. Simari, executive vice chancellor of the University of Kansas Medical Center. “And as students from multiple health programs learn to interact with each other, it improves the effectiveness of interprofessional medical teams and, ultimately, improves the health of the patient.”
Muma said the choice of downtown was no accident.
“If you look at other health science centers in the country, they are almost always located downtown,” he said. “The central location for the biomedical campus will create a health care corridor that will strengthen collaboration and support interprofessional health care learning, partnerships and research. It will benefit our entire community.”
The schools and the City Council believe having a high-tech facility will draw students, educators and researchers from around the country to Wichita.
Jeff Fluhr, president of Greater Wichita Partnership and Downtown Wichita, also has high hopes for the campus.
“We are confident that with the new campus, it will elevate actually our city center to a substantially new level of investment,” he said. “It is … estimated we will conservatively have over $100 million of new investment over the next seven to 10 years alone from this project.”