Surgery training center expands USF's role downtown

USF expects to break ground next month on a high-tech medical training center that will be the start of an expanded role for the university in downtown Tampa, USF health officials say.

The university originally planned to build a 60,000 square-foot complex housing surgical simulation suites, a virtual hospital, robotics lab and meeting and classroom space.

But after it bought a downtown parking lot from the city of Tampa this summer, it added 30,000 square feet to the plans for architecture, engineering, business and possibly other university programs, USF officials said at a Tampa Downtown Partnership meeting earlier this week.

"It's the beginning of the concept of USF Downtown," said USF College of Medicine dean Stephen Klasko.

The three-story building will be on South Franklin Street, south of the Fort Brooke garage and a few blocks from the Tampa Convention Center.

The construction contract went to The Beck Group.

"We were told it needs to look very much like a high-tech building," Beck's managing director in Tampa, Mark House, said.

Current plans include a glass front, two stories high with a view onto Franklin Street.

"This will be USF's foothold in downtown Tampa," House said.

Since USF began developing its Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation, or CAMLS, the price tag has edged up from $20 million to $25 million. USF Financing plans to raise the money with a bond issue.

The university had planned to locate the center in Tampa Heights north of downtown, but after the economy collapsed the property deal fell apart.

In June, USF agreed to pay the city of Tampa $3.5 million for the piece of land known as the HART lot, at the south end of downtown.

USF hopes to attract doctors from around the world to its new center. They'll learn and practice endoscopies, laparoscopies, stomach surgery, carotid stenting and other procedures, said Alexander Rosemurgy, USF associate dean for medical simulation and academic enrichment.

Shuttles will take them back and forth between the center and Tampa General Hospital, a few miles away on Davis Island.

The machines they would use are designed to mimic the functions and responses of a variety of body types, accounting for such factors as weight and age, Rosemurgy said.

Included in the collection is the Da Vinci Surgical System robot, which is so responsive that in the right hands it can peel the skin from a grape.

"We're teaching people a better way to practice specialty medicine," Rosemurgy said.

About a third of the users will be USF medical residents and students, said Deborah Sutherland, of the USF Health Office of Continuing Professional Development, a private, not-for-profit arm of USF that will manage the center.

Also, several medical equipment manufacturers, such as Intuitive Surgical, Stryker and Philips, will set up offices to provide training and do research and development.

"We're looking at how to attract large medical conferences to Tampa," Sutherland said.

She expects construction to be finished by December 2011.