Members of the Wexner Medical Center Board meet at the James Crane Sports Medicine Institute on April 5. Credit: Nick Roll | Campus Editor
The Wexner Medical Center Board voted on Wednesday to proceed with approving up to $6.6 million to seek out design and planning work for relevant portions of Ohio State’s Framework 2.0 development plan.
New details of Framework 2.0 — a laundry list of infrastructure developments announced earlier this year as an update to the original Framework infrastructure plan — were released Monday, along with updates to the ongoing 15th and High redevelopment plan. The new details of Framework 2.0 relating to the Wexner Center include planning for new buildings and overhauls for the medical campus, Wexner Center and its ambulatory center.
“The goal is here is to take advantage of the fact that we have seven colleges in health sciences,” said Bruce McPheron, executive vice president and provost. He said the project would help foster more collaboration in the education of medical professionals, including the training of doctors, nurses, pharmacists.
Part of the money will go to a new interdisciplinary research building as well, to be built potentially on West Campus near the College Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.
“If we’re going to be a world-class college of medicine … if we’re going to be a world-class university, we need to focus on the research enterprise,” McPheron said.
The approval of the proposal faced no opposition.
Voting on the full $5-7 million estimated to be doled out for design and planning costs is set to go to the Board of Trustees on Friday, assuming other committees also approve the money, some of which is also being allocated to on-campus development related to 15th and High.
