UA in talks with Phoenix to build $140M center on Downtown campus

After searching for the past few years for a hospital partner to develop a $140 million cancer center on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, the University of Arizona is moving ahead on its own.

UA is talking with the city about building a five-story, 250,000-square-foot structure on or near the downtown campus. Such a facility would join the ranks of Mayo Hospital in north Phoenix, Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Goodyear and the planned Banner Health-University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Gilbert, adding to the Valley’s growing cachet as a cancer research and treatment hub.

Dr. William Crist, UA vice president for health affairs, said he is in preliminary discussions with Phoenix officials to build on city land.
“We haven’t got the details worked out,” he said. “We’ve got quite a lot of people interested in helping with this. There are a lot of people affected by cancer.”

Crist hopes to raise money from the private sector and work with the city to borrow money to fund the center.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon said it is too early to say how much money would be raised from the private sector and how much would be borrowed.
“We are working on some exciting new financing vehicles to ensure that the cancer center, which has always been part of the original biomedical campus concept, is accelerated substantially,” Gordon said. “I’m working on this with federal agencies, with private individuals, with pharmaceutical and drug companies and foundations, and others to add to the biomedical campus.”

Banner Health had been a potential partner to develop a hospital with UA on the Biomedical Campus, but those talks ended in 2007. Banner turned instead to University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to jointly develop a cancer center on the Banner Gateway Medical Center campus in Gilbert. Plans for that facility call for breaking ground Dec. 1 and opening in 2011, said Banner spokesman Bill Byron.

Meanwhile, Crist continues to discuss UA’s relationship with Maricopa Integrated Health System, which for several years has indicated an interest in building a replacement hospital for Maricopa Medical Center near the Phoenix Biomedical Campus.

“There’s no question MIHS is interested in building a new hospital,” said Betsey Bayless, CEO of MIHS. “The focus of our conversation with the (UA) medical school is what’s our relationship going to be. That’s still where we are.”

Crist said he would like to see MIHS build a hospital near the campus, which houses the Translational Genomics Research Institute and the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix, in partnership with Arizona State University.
“That talk continues,” he said. “We’re very excited about that.”

He said a new MIHS hospital would complement the UA outpatient cancer treatment center, which would not have any patient beds.
The proposed cancer center would offer initial consultations, outpatient surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and opportunities to participate in clinical trials for new drugs and treatments.

David Veillette, president and CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, said cancer patients deserve as many options as possible.
UA’s expansion in Phoenix will help bring more of those options to the Valley.

“We have a small presence in Phoenix,” Crist said. “Now we’re moving to a major presence in Phoenix. We have four sites where we see patients and put them on clinical trials already. We’ll add a very large footprint downtown.”