UC-Riverside Pushes Ahead With Med School

UC-Riverside pushes on with its med school despite lack of state support.  From the Desert Sun:

PALM DESERT — University of California, Riverside officials should know within two weeks whether the state will OK a land transfer critical to its new medical school’s presence in the Coachella Valley.  At issue is 11.5 acres along Frank Sinatra Drive, just east of UCR’s existing Palm Desert campus... The medical school plans to build an outpatient medical clinic there that can be used as a teaching facility for students and medical residents, Dean G. Richard Olds said...

Olds said there is no plan B should the state decline to release the land. “I guess we’ll have to build it somewhere else,” he said.  A rejection would stretch out the unclear timeline. If UCR does get control of the land, what happens and when it happens still rests largely with the state. The clinic could range in size from 10,000 square feet to about 40,000 square feet and cost $20 million to $60 million depending, in part, on how much the state is willing to commit. Olds said a newly elected state senator and representative from the Riverside area have just introduced bills to restore $15 million a year in state funding for the school, after Gov. Jerry Brown squashed state contributions for the project in order to cut costs...

Full story at http://www.mydesert.com/article/20130308/NEWS04/303080023

 

Hmm.  Frank Sinatra Drive.  I guess the dean wants to do it his way despite lack of state support: