The University of Nevada, Reno plans to break ground later this year on a new life sciences building to replace an aging facility that dates to the early 1960s, according to nevadaappeal.com.
A new $137 million 89,000-sq.-ft. life sciences building will be constructed at the Mathewson Gateway District.
CORE Construction will be the project's contractor, with H&K Architects as the design firm. The project is expected to be completed by fall 2029, nevadaappeal.com reported.
The new building will be the home for 18 research labs for molecular and cellular biology, neuroscience and chemical ecology. There also will be four teaching labs, a 300-seat lecture hall, conference rooms and collaboration space.
Life sciences now occupies a wing of the 128,297-sq.-ft. Fleischmann College of Agriculture building dating to 1957; the life science wing was added between 1961 and 1963.
University officials said the life sciences facility was deemed functionally obsolete many years ago, according to nevadaappeal.com.
"It's not modern space," Jeffrey Thompson, executive vice president and provost at UNR, told nevadaappeal.com. "We have grown the enterprise from faculty working in biochemistry and biosciences, and the demand from students has also grown tremendously.
"We will have modern lab classrooms in this building to teach students state-of-the-art techniques in life science, biomedical and biochemical education, along with the technology that allows us to do that in ways we cannot do now. Students will be trained on the same equipment and have the same expectations that they will be using as they go forward in the workforce."
Thompson told nevadaappeal.com that the department hopes to announce a building-naming donor at the March Board of Regents meeting. A combination of $68.5 million from the state and a matching amount from private and institutional sources — which already includes a $30 million private gift — will fund the building costs.
More than 4,000 students annually will be served by the new building, while the existing Fleischmann facility will continue to house programs with smaller student demand, according to nevadaappeal.com,
The building also will house the university's Museum of Natural History, which includes collections of Great Basin flora and fauna going back to the 1850s.
The life science building will be across the street from the university's new College of Business. The Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Tree, a spruce planted nearby in the early 1900s in soil gathered from Civil War battlefields, will be preserved, Thompson said.
