And $10 million of renovation work is also proceeding at the Miami University Hamilton campus to renovate a nursing innovation hub for students learning in University Hall.
The lower enrollment, vehicle and pedestrian traffic of summertime is ideal for building and renovating, said Jessica Rivinius, spokeswoman for Miami.
“It has not been a sleepy summer here at Miami and we are so excited about the ongoing business and building construction we have going on,” said Rivinius. “We cannot wait for our students to get back and see all the wonderful new things we have going on.”
Most active among the construction sites is the busy and dusty lot where the $96 million Clinical Health Sciences and Wellness facility is rising.
Scheduled to be finished by summer 2023, the 165,000-square-foot building will house Miami’s new Master of Medical Science/Physician Associate studies program, the department of speech pathology and audiology and the Oxford cohort of the nursing program.
The clinical wing will house the Employee and Student Health Centers, student counseling, and the Speech and Hearing Clinic.
Across campus the final touches are being added to Miami’s new and larger Indoor Equestrian Center.
The 125-by-250-square foot center will end a tradition no one connected with the equestrian program will miss — rainouts of horse competitions and student practices.
“It’s been a long-awaited dream of ours and it allows us to guarantee the programming we offer,” said Beth Frey, assistant director of programming for the center.
“Now with the addition of the indoor (center) it gives us not only an additional riding space but a space we know we can host programming in. That particularly impacts our student programming at Miami as well as our community outreach and community programs, for area youths and others,” said Frey.
Some students in the equestrian program have already begun using the new indoor riding space and “they are so excited and overwhelmed” by the new facility, she said.
Miami officials are also excited about the school’s largest private sector partnership in creating a business development incubator uptown in Oxford with help from the city.
The $10.7 million College@Elm Innovation and Workforce Development Center at 20 S. Elm St. will house office space, an entrepreneurship center, startups, a workforce and small business development resource center, a design and testing area and space for manufacturing operations in a former Miami food services building vacant for 19 years.
And construction will begin this fall on the Richard M. McVey Data Science Building, an 87,000-square-foot space located along Talawanda Road on the Oxford campus near Withrow Hall and Benton Hall.
A $20 million gift from business leader Rick McVey, a 1981 Miami graduate, was one of the largest donations of its kind in Miami history and school officials plan for the building to open in January 2024.
The 85,000-square-foot building will house one of Miami’s newest departments, Emerging Technology in Business and Design, as well as the departments of statistics and mathematics, the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies, and the Center for Analytics and Data Science.
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