The Indiana University (IU) board of trustees has approved three new construction projects for the Bloomington and Southeast campuses.
Thomas Morrison, IU vice-president for capital planning and facilities, presented the requests, as well as the design of an addition to the Auxiliary Library Facility on the Bloomington campus, at the Dec. 1, 2017, meeting of the trustees’ facilities and auxiliaries committee.
The board approved three projects: The Regional Academic Health Center/Academic Health Sciences Building and a parking garage/office building at IU Bloomington and a housing lodge at IU Southeast.
The Regional Academic Health Center/Academic Health Sciences Building is a joint project with IU Health to construct a replacement hospital for the current IU Health Bloomington facility and an Academic Health Sciences Building for use by IU.
About 65 acres of land near the IU Golf Course will be leased to IU Health. About half of the acreage will be used for this development project, and the other half will be held for future growth. The academic space will include faculty offices, classrooms and related spaces for programs in nursing, medical science, speech and hearing sciences, and social work.
“The Regional Academic Health Center/Academic Health Sciences Building is a win-win-win opportunity,” Morrison said. “This complex will benefit Indiana University, IU Health and, most importantly, our local community.
“Students and faculty will learn and teach via a combination of traditional classroom as well as practical, hands-on experiences. These new facilities will allow for state-of-the-art teaching, simulation and research. IU Health will be able to improve patient outcomes from integration of this learning and research environment to benefit its staff and patients while helping to increase the state’s supply of expertly trained health professionals.
“Bloomington and surrounding communities will have easy access to health care co-located with IU academic programs and clinics. This location next to the State Road 45/46 Bypass is easily reached from all directions, with bus service nearby, and allows for future growth by both IU Health and Indiana University.”
A parking garage/office building will be constructed north of 11th Street, near the new Luddy Hall. As proposed in the 2010 Bloomington Campus Master Plan, this facility will provide additional parking in this growing campus neighborhood as well as needed administrative/academic office space.
Also, a new 24-unit, apartment-style housing lodge on the Southeast campus will join five existing lodges to help serve the growing need for on-campus housing in New Albany.
All three projects were approved. No renderings were presented for these projects; all will return to the board at a future meeting for design approval.
The design of an addition to the existing Auxiliary Library Facility on the Bloomington campus (Range Road east of the Data Center) also was approved. The addition will increase the facility by 32,000 sq. ft., allowing for centralized, long-term storage of artifacts such as art, textiles, films and photographs, fossils, and sound recordings.
