JULY 20, 2005 | Work has started at the site of the new $14 million residence hall at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).

The more than 92,000-square-foot facility, to be built on Markham Street just north of the Arkansas State Hospital, will feature two wings of rooms and a central administration building. It is expected to be complete by fall 2006 and replace the existing student dormitory adjacent to the Harry P. Ward Tower of the UAMS Medical Center. The more than 45-year old dormitory building will be demolished in late 2005 or early 2006 to make room for a major hospital expansion.

“Our new residence hall will provide more up-to-date and improved accommodations to meet the changing needs of students and medical residents,” said UAMS Chancellor I. Dodd Wilson, M.D. “It is another element in our expansion program that will transform the UAMS campus and increase our ability to meet the future needs of our educational, patient care and research missions.”

The new residence hall, offering housing for UAMS students and medical residents, will include more than 177 rooms, with a mix of traditional dormitory-style rooms with semi-private bath, one-bedroom apartments and efficiency apartments. The rooms will feature computer network access and individual heating/cooling units, while the apartments will also include washers and dryers.

The construction contractor for the residence hall is Baldwin & Shell Construction Company of Little Rock and the architect is Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects of Little Rock.

The new residence hall is part of a more than $200 million campus expansion initiative with construction projects that include the hospital expansion, a psychiatry facility, a parking deck and a power plant. Work on those projects will begin in late 2005 through 2006.

Other expansion projects are underway, such as continuing work on a five-floor, $13 million addition to the Harvey and Bernice Jones Eye Institute at UAMS. In April, UAMS opened a new $15 million facility to house the state’s first Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography scanner (PET/CT) and a medical cyclotron that provides isotopes for PET scanning.

Additional information about the UAMS campus expansion can be found online at www.uams.edu/growing.