UAMS gets $10.5 million grant for cancer center

A cancer research center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has won a $10.5 million federal grant, which officials said Monday would fund the construction of two more floors on the 12-story tower.

Six floors of the building should be ready in 2011, though part of the plan for the $72 million center is to leave some space vacant.

“We want to leave some room for expansion five to 10 years from now,” said Dr. Peter Emanuel, director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. Emanuel said research and technological developments advance so quickly that having unfurnished space will enable the medical school to move quickly when there is a new opportunity.

The floors that will be funded with the grant from the National Institutes for Health will have an open floor plan, which enables researchers to share equipment and encourages them to work together, Emanuel said.

UAMS Chancellor Dan Rahn said the two floors will have 87 people working in research or support positions, quality jobs that will help the area economy.

University officials say the money will finish two floors, where 87 researchers and support staff will work when the area opens next year. Six floors of the tower are now set for completion. The school wants to leave some of the space unfinished, so it can quickly add new components when it has the opportunity.

UAMS Awarded Grant

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University officials were joined by Gov. Mike Beebe on Monday in the building’s first-floor lobby, a very much unfinished area where attendees were loaned hard hats.

Beebe praised UAMS officials for good planning, because the grant money came from federal economic stimulus funds and had to go toward a project where construction could begin quickly.

In 2007, the Legislature approved spending $36 million for construction of the tower, with a promise from UAMS that it could match that sum with grants and donations, which it has done. At the time, the state had a $900 million surplus — a far cry from the state budget cuts that the governor announced just before the UAMS event.

Beebe noted that it was impossible in 2007 to anticipate that the NIH would be giving out economic stimulus grants. Had UAMS not adopted its plan to first construct a shell building, “we wouldn’t be here talking about this today,” the governor said.

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