Cincinnati, Ohio-based Messer Construction has broken ground on a six-story, 257,000-square-foot health education facility, billed as being integral to one Kentucky university’s education and research goals.
Messer and the University of Louisville have turned dirt on the school’s forthcoming Health Sciences Building, a connecting point for the university’s schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and public health and information sciences, according to a Tuesday announcement.
The university has estimated that the project will cost $280 million. Nearly all of it — $260 million — will be covered by the state of Kentucky, which voted to allocate the funds as part of a $450 million package in April 2024, according to Kentucky business news outlet The Lane Report. The remaining $20 million will come from the school.
Once complete, the building will include extensive medical simulation facilities and dedicated spaces for learning, research and work, per the announcement. As a throughline for the different schools, the space will facilitate interdisciplinary learning.
To that end, the building will feature modular classroom and conference spaces, research labs and workspaces. The School of Public Health and Information Sciences will be completely housed within the structure, while the construction team will customize other spaces for the remaining schools.
The university anticipates that construction will be completed in 2029.
Amid an overall softening construction market, healthcare builds maintained planning momentum, according to Dodge Construction Network. However, education builds, classified as institutional construction, have softened.
Other university-affiliated healthcare facilities in the region are making progress. Chicago-based Walsh Construction is working on a $781 million hospital for the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
Further, in March, a joint venture between Chicago-based Walsh Construction and New York City-based Turner Construction completed construction on a $1.5 billion Ohio State University hospital in Columbus.
