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UCI Makes Strides With New Developments

The University of California, Irvine, has hit one milestone for the development of a new 9-acre healthcare-focused college on its local campus, while it moves closer to kicking off construction for a new hospital and other facilities on a portion of a nearly 200-acre parcel it owns near the Irvine and Newport Beach city lines.

The school in late July held a topping-off ceremony for the Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences, one of the larger developments underway in Orange County.

The event commemorated completion of the framing for the five-story, 108,200-square-foot building for the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute, as well as an adjoining four-story-level, 71,500-square-foot building for the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing.

The project broke ground in early 2020, and is expected to open in 2023.

Susan and Henry Samueli in 2017 gave $200 million, which is UCI’s largest reported gift in its history, for the building as well as faculty chairs, scholarships and other projects. Sue and Bill Gross committed another $40 million to the new college.

Samueli Sightings

The college will include multiple areas of focus, with a School of Medicine, the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences and a future School of Population & Public Health expected to be based at the new facility, located at the corner of Michael Drake Drive and California Avenue.

The site is adjacent to the UCI Research Park office campus.

Among other features, the development will include a Zen garden, a 150-seat auditorium and a 600-foot-long wellness walk to the School of Medicine’s Biomedical Research Center.

“Four years ago, in 2017, our health science mission of ‘Discover, Teach, Heal’ was launched into a new trajectory by the vision of Susan and Henry Samueli, whose farsighted support for an evidence-based approach that engages all disciplines in caring for the whole person and total community inspires us all,” UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman said in a statement.

Henry Samueli, chairman and co-founder of chipmaking giant Broadcom, and his wife made an appearance at the topping-off event.

Between their foundation, The Samueli Foundation, and their other holdings, the couple are reported to have donated an additional $70 million to UCI beyond the $200 million gift.

Next Up

The university’s UCI Medical Center in Orange is already Orange County’s largest medical facility, generating $1.3 billion in revenue for the 12 months ended Sept. 30.

The research university has ambitious plans to further expand its healthcare footprint on campus.

One example of that can be seen on the northern edge of its Irvine campus along Jamboree Road, where grading work and early stage construction appears close to kicking off at the $1 billion UCI Medical Center Irvine-Newport.

An acute care hospital with emergency and surgery departments and an ambulatory care center will join Health Center for Advanced Care, a five-story outpatient pavilion whose cost is expected to run about $220 million. 

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Audrey Kemp
Audrey Kemp
Audrey Kemp is a staff reporter and occasional photojournalist for the Orange County Business Journal. Her beats include — but are not limited to — healthcare, startups, and education. While pursuing her bachelors in literary journalism at UC Irvine, she interned for New York-based magazine Narratively Inc., wrote for Costa Mesa-based lifestyle magazine Locale, and covered the underground music scene for two SoCal-based music publications. She is an unwavering defendant of the emdash and the Oxford comma.
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