This rendering shows a courtyard will separate the new education building from the current Verner S. Holmes Learning Resource Center.

Last spring turned bleak for supporters of an effort to get a new main education building built for the University of Mississippi Medical School in Jackson.

No bond issue would be coming from the Legislature to back the 151,000 square-foot construction project which the year before had received $4.5 million from legislators for preliminary planning and engineering work.

More recently, though, the outlook has brightened considerably. Gov. Phil Bryant has made the training of new physicians and other medical professionals a key part of his plan for establishing health care districts around the state. And the Mississippi Development Authority has earmarked $10 million in federal Community Development Block Grant money.

The governors support and $10 million in seed money allows Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice dean of the School of Medicine and associate chancellor for health affairs, to comfortably predict construction will start on the $63-million project in 2013.

Whether she is correct hinges on legislative approval of a $30-million educational bond. Woodward says she likes her chances, given Bryants backing and a $10-million head start received in recent weeks. We are so excited about our support from the governor, she said in an interview last week. And we do think that will add momentum to our visits with the Legislature this year in a very positive way.

Success gaining the support of lawmakers is expected to boost the private fundraising needed to pay the full $63-million cost of the project, according to Woodward.

The five-floor medical school building is the first phase in a three-building plan that also includes a research center on the west part of the campus situated between Woodrow Wilson and Lakeland Drive. A parking garage is the final phase of the three-phase project. Work on all three buildings should be under way in the next two years, Woodward said.

Separately, on the clinical side the medical center hopes to build an addition to the Childrens Hospital that would include operating rooms and radiology suites, she added.

The major goal of the medical school expansion is to increase enrollment to 165 to 175 students from the 130 or so its now enrolling. We are poised to make that jump when we get our new medical school building, Woodward said.

Read the original:

Bryant’s support, $10M grant give new life to medical school plans