City OKs $7.7 million for UIW med school

UIW President Lou Agnese said Thursday's vote “cleared the No. 1 hurdle” for building the medical school downtown. UIW President Lou Agnese said Thursday's vote “cleared the No. 1 hurdle” for building the medical school downtown. Photo: File Photo, San Antonio Express-News Photo: File Photo, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close City OKs $7.7 million for UIW med school 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The City Council voted unanimously Thursday to approve a $7.7 million funding agreement for infrastructure improvements and job incentives, some of which will literally help pave the way for the University of the Incarnate Word to build an osteopathic medical school in downtown San Antonio.

Mayor Julián Castro said the medical school fits a vision of San Antonio with more higher education and graduate-level opportunities. Councilman Diego Bernal, in whose district the school would be located, called it a “huge win for downtown.”

Last month, UIW signed a letter of intent with the San Antonio Independent School District to lease up to three acres of Fox Tech High School's unused athletic fields to build the medical school.

They have until Oct. 31 to sign a contract, and the deal still hinges on receiving several million dollars from Bexar County to help fund a parking garage at the site — and on UIW President Louis Agnese Jr.'s ability to raise $50 million in private donations.

If the pieces don't come together to build at Fox Tech, Agnese has said UIW's second choice would be Brooks City-Base. But Agnese said Thursday's vote cleared “the number one hurdle.”

The city funding agreement includes $6.9 million to construct a new two-lane road to be called Medical Arts Boulevard, which would extend from Camaron Street toward Soledad Street, to extend a water line, and to make improvements to North Flores Street from West Quincy Street toward the Fox Tech campus, according to council documents.

Spending in the 2014 fiscal year will amount to $397,800 from the city's capital budget reserve for future projects and Council District 1's Infrastructure Management Improvement Program, according to council documents. The council will appropriate funding in future years during the budget process.

The agreement also includes $800,000 in incentives for job creation and talent recruitment from the Inner City Incentive Fund to be paid half in fiscal year 2015 and half in fiscal year 2016.

The city also will allocate $138,000 to monitor the funding agreement.

Castro called the move a victory for the downtown area and said the proposal will give high school students in the urban core and elsewhere “an opportunity to pursue their higher education in a more affordable way and perhaps become the physician they want to be.”

Because UIW's proposed partnership with SAISD includes educational benefits for the health career programs at Fox Tech, Edison High School and Whittier Middle School, Bernal said, “In one fell swoop, the city, UIW and the school district have made those neighborhoods more attractive, have made those schools more attractive, and that has a revitalizing effect.”

One of the remaining hurdles is convincing the county to provide $5 million, half of what UIW needs to build a 550-vehicle parking facility at the medical school. County officials plan to meet with those at SAISD to discuss a possible location for the garage, County Judge Nelson Wolff said Thursday.

UIW has proposed building the garage under the medical school, an idea Wolff said, “we don't particularly like” because the county needs to have ownership when utilizing property tax dollars.

“We're just not comfortable with it yet,” he said. “We want to try to help but it has to make sense for the county, too.”

Agnese also said he'll be meeting with South Texas lawmakers in hopes of working with them in the next legislative session to tap into state funding for UIW's professional schools, which could drive down the tuition rate at the medical school from $45,000 to $50,000 a year for the four-year program to $20,000 to $25,000 per year.

Unlike the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio's allopathic or M.D. program, a type of program which has historically been seen as more science or research-oriented, UIW's medical school would offer an osteopathic, or D.O., program.

D.O. programs take a holistic approach, and their graduates tend to go into family practice, internal medicine and pediatrics, Gregg Anders, a D.O. and consultant for UIW, has said.

jlloyd@express-news.net

Twitter: @jlloydster