St. Jude to build $412 million advanced research center

In one of the largest capital projects in Memphis history, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital will erect a $412 million research center complete with futuristic, glass-walled laboratories nestled amid open-space areas to give scientists a chance to share ideas and discoveries as they talk shop.

The hospital on Monday will formally announce plans for the 625,000-square-foot advanced research center, which is a major component of the $1 billion capital expansion of the Downtown campus outlined two years ago.

Construction will begin this spring, following the demolition of a single-story building that now houses such departments as human resources, security and information sciences. Completion is set for 2021.

Involving 5,000 construction workers and 125 vendors, it's among the largest construction projects the city has seen. Even with inflation factored in, the center will cost far more than the $250 million price tag of the 14-year-old FedExForum, and it's about 50 percent more expensive than the $275 million tower now being built at Methodist University Hospital.

Rising seven stories, plus a penthouse and basement, the center will accommodate 1,000 employees and double the research space now available at St. Jude.

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With its open-arch design, featuring abundant common areas splashed in natural light, the facility will be a "hub of collaboration," said Dr. James R. Downing, St. Jude's president and CEO.

"It will really be a state-of-the-art research center, unlike anything else built in the United States...," Downing said.

"What we're really trying to do is enhance the collaborative space where people can interact. In many research buildings, researchers are sequestered away."

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In addition to atriums, courtyards and other "interaction zones," the center will have cutting-edge technology in labs devoted to immunology, neurobiology, cell and molecular biology, gene editing, advanced microscopy, immunotherapy and other fields.

"It's really focused on fundamental biology processes that are altered under cancer and other catastrophic disease processes," Downing said.

Lead architect The Crump Firm of Memphis and Jacobs, the engineering and technical support firm based in Dallas, spent a year developing the design of the center.

The high cost of the project in part reflects the complexity of air-handling, sterility and other components needed in high-tech labs, St. Jude officials said.

"We have committed critical resources to equip the brightest minds in science with the world's most sophisticated technologies and equipment so that we can continue to speed discoveries that will save children," James I. Morgan, St. Jude scientific director and executive vice president, said in a prepared statement.

Freeing up space in the existing Danny Thomas Research Center and the Donald P. Pinkel, MD, Research Tower, the new facility will meet St. Jude's needs for the next 20 years, Downing said.

St. Jude, which is increasing its staff at a rate of 130 per year, now employs more than 4,500 people at its campus. ALSAC, the fundraising and outreach arm of the hospital, employs another 1,000 or so there, spokeswoman Nancy Newton said in an email.

Money for the research center will come from the same type of fundraising that already pays for most of the operating and capital expenditures of the hospital. Although it costs $2.4 million a day to operate St. Jude, no patient or family receives a bill for treatment.

St. Jude's 2016 annual report showed revenues of $1.38 billion, some 85 percent of which came from fundraising, with research grants and insurance reimbursements accounting for most of the rest. Net assets at year's end were $3.96 billion, up from $3.76 billion at the end of 2015.

Since its founding in 1962, St. Jude has helped raise the survival rate for childhood cancer to more than 80 percent in developed countries. But Downing said there's plenty of research challenges left, including raising that rate further and expanding cancer-fighting capabilities in developing countries, where fewer than 20 percent of children survive the disease. Other diseases, such as sickle-cell anemia and hemophilia, also are research targets at the hospital.

Reach Tom Charlier at thomas.charlier@commercialappeal.com or 901-529-2572 and on Twitter at @thomasrcharlier.