Home > About BNE > Press Room > 2011 Archive > March > Medical Campus Growth Has Only Begun

Medical Campus Growth Has Only Begun

 by Tracey Drury
 
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
  

 With thousands of new jobs and nearly 50 new companies, the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus has evolved significantly over the past 10 years.

But lots more is yet to come.

That was the main message campus officials planned to deliver Wednesday night during an event to highlight its updated strategic plan.

“When the founders of the medical campus came together, they laid out a vision and we’re implementing that vision,” says Matt Enstice, executive director. “Maybe it was a pie-in-the-sky idea at the time, but it came together.”

The event also served as a platform to announce the renaming and dedication of the Innovation Center — now home to 25 companies — as the Thomas R. Beecher Jr. Innovation Center; and to give details on the $36 million parking ramp, which will include solar energy and charging stations for electric cars.

The past 10 years have seen millions of square feet in new development and more than 50 new and existing companies joining the BNMC, bringing with them hundreds of new jobs. Thousands of jobs are expected to follow in the next 10 years as the campus continues to expand and grow.

Already, the company is home to 4.5 million square feet of existing research, clinical and support space. More than two million more square feet are currently or soon to be under construction, representing $500 million in public and privately financed projects. As those projects come to fruition, the campus workforce will swell to 12,000 from today’s 8,500. That’s in addition to the more than one million annual visitors and patients.

“Others want to join in,” says William Joyce, BNMC board chairman. “It’s demonstrative of what people believe is the obvious development and potential development of the campus. Everyone wants to be a part of it.”

BNMC officials also highlighted many of the successes that have come to fruition thus far, while laying out five new goals for the campus.

• Integrate research, teaching, education and entrepreneurship. The Innovation Center and the UB Gateway facility are tangible examples of those four elements combining for the benefit of existing and new institutions and companies - and both are housed in rehabilitated facilities.

• Achieve greater density and seek collaborative opportunities.

“The BNMC can be this great marbling of new and old — the texture, the colors, the reuse of historic structures and construction of new, cutting-edge facilities,” says David Gamble, a Boston-based consultant with Gamble Associates, who has worked with BNMC for the past decade.

• Establish a cohesive public realm. This part comes next, as the BNMC prepares this year to develop a linear park up and down Ellicott Street, while bringing new signage in to establish a collective identity for the campus. These items will help tie together the campus.

• Grow while supporting the economic viability of neighborhoods. Gamble says this part is easier said than done, but has been a recognizable goal in Buffalo, unlike other cities, where hospitals recognize their first goal is to care for the ill, not foster commercial development on a side street.

That’s not to say the BNMC must actually invest its own dollars in the surrounding community, but it must offer support for those that do. That’s part of the reason the organization has worked with neighborhood groups, commercial developers and nonprofit organizations as they redevelop empty storefronts and create new housing opportunities.

“Planning for medical centers is inherently complicated. Everyone has a different vision of what should happen,” Gamble says. “The challenge is to try to get those visions into alignment. I do think this is where the BNMC has achieved more than its peers in helping to align those opportunities.”

Read more: Medical campus growth has only begun | Business First