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Funding from a $42.8 million PID bond issuance will help create infrastructure for a new Medical Education and Research Campus in Provo. The campus will be home for the proposed Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine and the new home for Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions.

Courtesy the proposed Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine

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Funding from a $42.8 million PID bond issuance will help create infrastructure for a new Medical Education and Research Campus in Provo. The campus will be home for the proposed Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine and the new home for Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions.

Courtesy the proposed Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine

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A proposed osteopathic college based out of Provo is one of two higher education institutions to receive the first Public Infrastructure District bonds in the state on Aug. 19.

Just weeks after the American Osteopathic Association’s Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation approved the proposed Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine recruit students for its inaugural class on July 9, the proposed college and Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions were issued a $42.8 million bond.

In May 2019, the Utah Legislature passed Senate Bill 228, which allowed the formation of a Public Infrastructure District. The Public Infrastructure District is tasked with financing public infrastructure for new development and redevelopment projects across the state.

“It’s a big deal for Utah because it’s the first one,” founding President Richard Nielsen said. “It’s a big deal for Provo. We had a great team that put this together, but without the help of Mayor (Michelle) Kaufusi and the city administration and the Provo City Municipal Council, this wouldn’t have ever happened in as fast a time frame as it did.”

The issuance, the proposed college’s founding dean and chief academic officer John Dougherty said in a statement, serves as a catalyst for the new medical school, which will be based in Utah County and service the entire state.

The $42.8 million bond issued to the proposed Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine and Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions is the first issuance since the bill was passed last year.

The bond will be used to support the development of a Medical Education Research Campus, which administrators broke ground on in November.

“This is more than just the building of the medical school, the Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine (proposed),” Nielsen said. “It’s also to finance the entire campus where not only the proposed college of osteopathic medicine will be located but also the Rocky Mountain University will be relocating on campus to that new site in the next couple of years.”

The 400,000 square foot Medical Education Research Campus is expected to be a medical education and research space for students of the proposed Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine and students of the affiliated Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions, a combined student union building as well as a surgical and research space.

Campus plans also involve 685 units of multi-family housing, totaling 685,000 square feet and 234,000 square feet of parking structures with 780 stalls.

“This bond issuance and our ability to create infrastructure on the campus is important to recruiting students and building awareness with the communities of Utah,” Dougherty said. “The medical school’s goal is to attract the highest-caliber students, including those local students who want to stay in Utah for their medical education.”

The construction of the Medical Education Research Campus is expected to cost over $65 million. The project also will generate about $83.5 million in direct, new construction value. The proposed college is expected to have an economic impact of at least $100 million each year once the campus is up and running and all classes are fully enrolled.

Administrators believe the proposed college will create 1,027 new jobs in the area, Nielsen said, including faculty and staff as well as indirectly created jobs, such as in construction. In fact, he said, there will be an estimated 522 construction workers on site with an estimated payroll of $33.3 million. The proposed college is also estimating it will directly create about 790 full-time jobs between the two institutions.

The two colleges worked with D.A. Davidson & Co’s Special District Group to secure the bond funding. The process to secure the grant took almost two months, which Nielsen said is impossibly quick.

With issuance of the Public Infrastructure District bond, Nielsen said administrators can now begin infrastructure development for the campus, which involves preparing utilities and sewer, and planning the roads that will exist throughout the campus.

Since the groundbreaking ceremony on Nov. 8, Nielsen said crews began grading the land and started minor infrastructure projects before the coronavirus pandemic, which set the expected competition date back. The Public Infrastructure District bond, he said, will help the proposed college accelerate construction timelines.

Nielsen said he expects construction to begin sometime next month.

“You’ll start seeing a lot of activity on the Medical Education Research Campus that will continue to accelerate,” Nielsen said. “Hopefully, by the end of this year or early into 2021, we will start seeing some steel rising up out of the ground for the medical school building.”

While the proposed college has been working to gather funding, Nielsen said school administration has been hard at work, recruiting students and accepting applications. The first class has 90 available seats and students accepted into the inaugural class will begin instruction in the fall of 2021.

In a previous interview, Dougherty said the proposed school is anticipating it will receive 3,500-5,000 applications. In the less than two months that the proposed college has been accepting applications, Nielsen said, the proposed school has seen about 300 applications pour in.