The University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the corner of Main and High streets on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The $375 million, 540,000 sq. ft. complex is expected to open in Fall 2016.

The building is the first project to be funded by a NYSUNY Challenge Grant provided by Gov. Cuomo when he signed the NYSUNY 2020 bill into law in 2011. The new downtown medical school is a critical piece of the university’s UB2020 plan; it is a milestone project in the university’s history and in the city’s efforts to reinvent itself as a destination for world-class health care.

With a new medical school, UB will hire 100 new medical faculty members and grow the size of its medical school class from 140 to 180 students. The new 21st century facility will provide a dramatic, state-of-the-art upgrade for the medical school, which has been located on the UB South Campus since the mid-1950s.

The signature feature of the new medical school is a light-filled, seven-story glass atrium that joins the building’s two L-shaped structures and which includes connecting bridges to adjacent buildings and a stairway that cascades down from south to north. Serving as the building’s main interior “avenue,” the atrium will be naturally illuminated by skylights and two glass walls, one along Washington Street and one at the terminus of Allen Street.

Floors 1-2: medical education, community corridor, public outreach programs (such as the UB Mini Medical School) and NFTA-Metro rail station

Floors 3-5: state-of-the-art research facilities

Floors 3-7: administrative offices, academic departments

Floor 6: Behling Simulation Center, Clinical Competency Center and dean’s suite

Floor 7: gross anatomy lab, surgical skills and robotic surgery