USF trustee Brian Lamb speaks to the Florida Board of Governors about the downtown medical school on Thursday in Tallahassee.
- Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
- Reporter-Tampa Bay Business Journal
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In a drastic departure from last month's meeting, the Florida Board of Governors unanimously and enthusiastically approved $17 million in state funding for the University of South Florida's downtown medical school campus.
A presentation by USF trustee Brian Lamband USF health dean Charly Lockwood on what the downtown campus of the Morsani College of Medicine will mean to the university and its recruitment and research efforts were well received by the board.
"This has been very thoughtful," board member Alan Levine said.
The board was scheduled to vote on the funding at its January meeting, but the vote was delayed when USF officials did not provide a business plan to board members in advance.
Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik has offered to donate an acre of his real estate holdings in downtown Tampa to USF for the project, a 319,000-square-foot building that will house both the medical school and USF Heart Health Institute. The board previously approved $15.7 million for the heart institute — the final allocation of funding for the $50 million project.
"This is a big, bold collaboration," Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn said in a statement. "It takes imagination, public and private financial commitment and tenacity to see a vision as dynamic as this through to fruition."
The city has already signed off on $15 million in public funding for infrastructure and reconfiguring the road grid in Vinik's district.
The request for funding will now be considered by the Florida legislature and need to be approved by Gov. Rick Scott before the deal is finalized.
The total ask for state funding for the downtown location is $57 million. USF will seek $20 million each over the next two years.
Check back as this is a developing story.
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