After years of fits and starts, three university presidents, two medical school deans, two governors and one pandemic, last Wednesday marked the end of a long and tortured road — the red ribbon was cut, and the Kirk Kerkorian Medical Education Building at UNLV was finally complete.
The $125 million, 135,000-square-foot building — located just blocks away from the university’s existing medical campus and a pair of hospitals — has been billed as a critical medical infrastructure investment for the region, long plagued by severe physician shortages.
The UNLV medical school — now called the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, after the Las Vegas Strip mogul whose estate helped fund the new building — has since graduated two classes. Last year, it earned full accreditation after a years-long process.
But in the end, it was neither UNLV nor the Nevada System of Higher Education that shepherded the project over the finish line. It was a private company, the Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation (NHBC).
Designed as a political and financial end-around that could funnel state money and philanthropic funds around the systems that traditionally cover massive university capital projects, the NHBC formed in 2019 as a unique partnership between philanthropic entities and the state following years of feuding within the state’s higher education apparatus.
With the sprawling medical education building presenting a now-tangible backdrop, the NHBC and Gov. Steve Sisolak have heralded the project as a total success, one that has come in below projected budgets and far before construction deadlines.
“Needless to say, we didn’t worry about history or the odds when we took on this endeavor,” NHBC President and CEO Maureen Schafer said in prepared remarks Wednesday. “And I can say today with this building, we care, we now compete and we are catching up.”
To that end, Sisolak announced Wednesday that he would use one of his bill draft requests — should he be re-elected as governor — to establish a formal “Las Vegas Academic Medical District” in the area around the medical education building, a move he said would provide education for specialized services and space for new research centers.
That district will be initially filled by two new buildings already funded by public money: an ambulatory care clinic and a pathology lab, both partially paid for by $70 million in federal American Rescue Plan money directed to the NHBC. Both buildings are set to be owned by the company in perpetuity, according to Schafer.
Asked about the future of the relationship between the state and the NHBC following Wednesday’s ribbon cutting, Sisolak said: “Because of the development corporation, I felt confident putting $70 million of state money on this campus.”
How we got here
The medical education building was, as they say, not built in a day.
Founded in 2014, the nascent UNLV medical school had cleared most early accreditation and funding hurdles by 2015 and 2016, and had seriously eyed the creation of a new centerpiece building for the school through 2017. But even as the necessary land and $25 million in matching funds from the state meant to boost the project were secured, the process began spiraling.
By late 2017, regents had begun criticizing then-UNLV President Len Jessup publicly, as the cost of the project ballooned from a promised $100 million to more than $232 million. At the same time, the school had secured far less funding than initially hoped — just $64 million, a sum that included the $25 million of state dollars (meant to match a mystery donor’s $25 million contribution match, later revealed to be from Kerkorian’s estate).
The next year, Jessup was ousted as university president…
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