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The University of Iowa received approval from the Board of Regents facilities committee to move ahead with work on two prominent buildings on campus.
U-I Vice President, Rod Lehnertz says they plan to remodel the seventh floor of the Van Allen building. “It’s a building built in the 60s, and it’s showing its age, absolutely. But it is nonetheless very important for us, especially as it relates to our space science and spaceflight hardware work that we do, which is renowned nationwide,” Lehnertz says.
He says the renovations will include humidity control, temperature control, and upgraded classroom space related to grant research.
“It’s well documented, the renown we have with NASA …as described in your document, physics, and astronomy brought in $54 million from NASA in the last five years. And then the largest grant in the history of our university to TRACERS mission, $115 million,” he says. TRACERS is a pair of satellites that will study how the solar wind interacts with the region around Earth dominated by its magnetic field.
Lehnertz says the upgrade is needed to stay on top of the research requirements. “We are regarded highly by NASA. We are partners with them constantly. But their expectations are high for research space on that level,” Lehnertz says. “And it’s happening in a great building named after a great man in James Van Allen, but a building that needs care. And this project will modernize that space.” Van Allen is the U-I space scientist who discovered the radiation belts in the upper atmosphere that were later named after him.
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The other project involves expanding the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Stead Family Children’s Hospital. The expansion will fill the seventh floor of the hospital which is currently unoccupied. “Our current planning suggests it would be a 40 to 49 million dollar range of costs — but we’ll obviously pin that down through the construction. It would be University Hospitals bills it building usage funds,” Lehnertz says.
He described some of the plans for the space. “Twenty-eight new patient rooms all the associated support spaces and infrastructure needed for a NICU unit,” he says.
The Children’s Hospital has gotten nationwide attention for “The Wave,” where fans and players in nearby Kinnick Stadium turn and wave to the patients following the end of the first quarter of Hawkeye football games. The full Board of Regents is expected to approve the proposals today (Thursday).