UC-San Francisco building $200 million neuroscience center

From the San Francisco Business Times:

Innovative neuroscience research will follow innovative financing of UCSF’s $200 million neuroscience center.

Construction on the five-story, 237,000-square-foot building began in May and will be completed in April 2012, said Michael Bade, UCSF interim assistant vice chancellor for capital programs and campus architect. It eventually will house 150 investigators looking at treatments, devices and diagnostics for diseases ranging from multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer’s disease.

In all, more than 600 UCSF employees will be housed in the building that Steve Hauser, chair of UCSF’s neurology department, has said will be a meeting place for research, patients and technology.

The building jumped ahead of others on the development plan for the Mission Bay campus after a nonprofit group leased the land from the University of California. That allowed for unique financing. The public California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank sold bonds, the proceeds from which were funneled through the nonprofit to private developer Edgemoor/McCarthy Cook Partners LLC.

When Clark Construction Co. is finished with the building, Edgemoor/McCarthy Cook, which is subleasing the parcel from the nonprofit group, will lease the structure to the UC. The rent over 30 years will pay principal and interest on the bonds.

Edgemoor/McCarthy Cook was set up by Edgemoor Real Estate Services and McCarthy Cook & Co.

But the buck doesn’t stop there. Many of the new researchers that Hauser and UCSF hope to bring into the building will be funded by a $55 million endowment coming out of a $150 million fund-raising campaign.