CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland Clinic is moving forward with plans to build a 21,000-square-foot building that stores frozen tissue samples on its campus by 2019, the Clinic announced Monday.

The state-of-the-art biorepository will help researchers study human tissues, and advance the field of personalized medicine for cancer, heart disease, epilepsy and other illnesses. Personalized medicine, in which treatments are tailored to specific patients, is the future of medicine, said Dr. Lara Jehi, principal investigator for the biorepository.

It is still early days in the facility's planning. The Clinic has not determined a specific location, price tag or number of jobs it will create, a Clinic spokeswoman said. Hospital system planners also have been meeting with Fairfax neighborhood officials to determine an agreeable site.

The facility will house thousands of frozen tissue samples collected from Clinic patients, Jehi said. Currently, tissue samples are stored in research labs across the hospital system. The proposed two-story biorepository will allow thousands of samples to be stored in one location, making it easier for researchers to answer longstanding questions about genetics, disease and the human body, Jehi said.

"This will take patient care and research innovation to the next level," she said.

Brooks Life Sciences, a worldwide provider of cryogenic services, will manage the biorepository, including storing and maintaining the tissue samples, the Clinic said in a press release. Brooks Life Sciences is a division of Brooks Automation, headquartered in Chelmsford, Massachusettes.

An early site plan presented to the Cleveland City Planning Commission in March placed the biorepository on Cedar Avenue at E. 103rd Street, on the southeastern edge of the Clinic's campus.

The hospital system purchased Calvary Hill Baptist Church, the only remaining building on the potential site, in August 2017 for $1.2 million, according to property records. The congregation relocated in February.

The current proposed location would place the biorepository between the Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center to the west, and a new IBM office building to the east, according to press reports.

Community leaders in the Fairfax neighborhood, where the Clinic is located, were pleased with talks held with the Clinic, and felt that all parties will be able to agree on a final location.

Denise VanLeer, executive director of the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corp., stressed that talks are ongoing about the biorepository's exact location, and that no final site decision has been made.

"We are committed to making it work for them and for us," VanLeer said. "We are in a good place. We will keep talking until we figure it out."

Fairfax will benefit because the biorepository can be leveraged to encourage other businesses to locate in the neighborhood. "That's how we're thinking," VanLeer said.

She doubts that the biorepository will do much to ease unemployment in the neighborhood, since she thinks it will employ only a handful of skilled workers. "You can't come off the street and do those jobs," VanLeer said.

Cleveland city councilman Blaine Griffin, whose Ward 6 includes the Clinic, said he appreciated how the hospital system worked with the community to identify the proposed biorepository location.

"This was a positive step in relations between the Cleveland Clinic and the community," Griffin said.