The Regents have made the right decision. This will ensure that any research dollars and other AAU metrics that the med. school might bring in will be counted.
Had the med school been built off campus, then UH could have found itself in the same situation as Nebraska, which lost its AAU membership largely because it had been counting research funding from its off-campus medical school; a practice that the AAU now disallows.
Read on.
Interestingly, it is in a part of campus that I bet most people didn’t realize was actually still campus.
A new University of Houston College of Medicine building will be constructed on the UH campus following approval by the University of Houston System Board of Regents. The approximately 150,000 square foot medical school building will be located at the “MacGregor site,” a 43-acre tract of undeveloped land the University purchased in 2008 near MacGregor Park on Martin Luther King Boulevard at Old Spanish Trail.
The College of Medicine will focus on preparing primary care doctors to practice in underserved urban and rural communities, addressing a significant shortage. Texas ranks 47th out of 50 states in primary care physician-to-population ratio.
Guess it’s a good thing we did not build the football stadium there.
I predict construction of new buildings on this property will continue with housing next.
Before any new housing is built, most med students will probably stay in Bayou Oaks, Campus Vue, The Vue on MacGregor or the new under construction apartments next to them, Tower 5040. These apartments are on Calhoun and only 9 minutes walking to the new med school site. Also there is Aspen Heights apartments at MLK and OST.
Tower 5040?
Not many students will be able to afford it but this shows how things are changing in the area. The location is next to Campus Vue on Calhoun Rd.
Tower 5040
Luxury apartments to break ground on former frat house site near University of Houston
By Fauzeya Rahman
Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Oct 16, 2018, 2:31pm CDT
Updated Oct 17, 2018, 2:48pm CDT
Developers will break ground later this month on a new private luxury apartment building close to the University of Houston’s main campus.
The project, named Tower 5040, will have 147 units with a mix of one-, two- and four-bedroom options. The eight-story building will rise on a 1.49-acre site near the intersection of Wheeler Avenue and Calhoun, where a former fraternity house used to be.
In 2015, the Sigma Chi International Fraternity closed its chapter at UH after it was suspended for alleged hazing earlier that year, the campus paper the Daily Cougar reported. In 2016, the fraternity house was torn down.
WGC Development — a partnership between Rocky Stevens and Mark Seger of Houston-based Wellington Development Co.; Steve Spessard from Colorado-based private equity firm Gore Creek Partners LLC along with an unnamed investor — bought the land at 5018 Calhoun in 2016, according to Harris County Appraisal District records.
Records show an entity named UH VP LP as the prior owner. Acho Azuike, COO and managing director for Houston-based DC Partners, was listed as the registered agent for UH VP LP, according to Texas comptroller records. Houston developer Randall Davis confirmed via email he and John Hammond, president and CEO of Riverway Title Co., planned to build a student apartment development but “couldn’t make the numbers work” based on current rent rates for competing apartments.
Before UH VP LP, Houston Sigma Chi House Corp. owned the land from 2008.
In October 2018, a city of Houston building permit for site work for $2.86 million was filed.
Stevens, president of Wellington Development, told the Houston Business Journal that WGC had “wanted to study the market” and decided the site’s proximity to campus along with the university’s growth in recent years made this a good opportunity.
“This one was a shoe-in,” he said.
Construction will begin later this month and should wrap by the summer of 2020, Stevens said. First move-ins will begin that August. Frost Bank will provide the construction loan, but construction costs weren’t shared. Nick Gonzalez with Austin-based GRC Capital arranged equity and debt for Tower 5040. Dallas-based Humphreys & Partners Architects designed the project, and Houston-based Arch-Con Construction is the general contractor. Houston-based The Mathis Group is the construction manager.
The building will have a three-story parking garage with five stories of residences above that. Amenities will include a large swimming pool with a “dive-in” movie screen, fitness center, conference room, private study rooms, game room and a “bark park.” Apartments will have stainless-steel appliances, quartz countertops, washers and dryers, and wood-like vinyl plank flooring. Some units will have balconies with fire pits and views of UH and downtown Houston.
They might afford it if they are getting free tuition
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