Moffitt expands facilities

A new $180-million addition to the H. Lee Moffitt Center could enhance more than research, said Project Coordinator Mark Miller.

The Vincent A. Stabile Research Building, which is to be completed in April 2003, will add 350,000 square feet of research space that can be used as a recruitment tool and help USF gain national recognition as a Research I university. The Stabile building will be one of many additions made to the Moffitt Center over the next few years.

“The research is state-of-the art and will enable Moffitt to attract doctors and researchers because it will be such a high caliber facility to work in,” Miller said.

The Moffitt Center is the only National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida.

The new research center will have three floors of research laboratories and will provide Moffitt with research and clinical areas as well as a conference center and auditorium.

The clinical area will include four full-service clinics, a procedure and testing center, a complete digital imaging center and an infusion center.

The conference center will serve as a place for interaction between researchers and clinicians as well as community outreach activities. And an auditorium will be used as a forum for major scientific presentations and exchanges.

A glass-enclosed walkway will join Moffitt’s research centers, and an adjacent parking garage will provide spaces for nearly 600 vehicles.

Michael Hoad, associate vice president for the health sciences center, said his faculty would work in conjunction with the Moffitt Center to recruit new researchers for the new labs.

“Moffitt’s reputation has grown very fast,” Hoad said. “It’s getting attention and is becoming the place where people want to work.”

Hoad said the Moffitt Center’s reputation is not the only thing attracting people to work there. “The new building will attract more people because they can start fresh in the labs,” Hoad said.

In June, Vincent A. Stabile, local philanthropist and retired businessman, donated $15 million to the Moffitt Center. The money is the largest private donation ever made to the Moffitt Center, which opened in 1986.

The money will assist in the completion of the building, named after Stabile, a former mechanical engineer who died July 12 at his home in Naples.

Mark Miller, tower project coordinator for the Moffitt Center, said the project’s approved budget is $122 million and is expected to reach $180 million when the multi-phased project is completed in the next few years.

The tower project is funded by multiple sources, including the majority financed by the James L. Stevens Act as part of the tobacco settlement that was passed in May 2002. The Stevens Act provides that a portion of the cigarette tax be paid monthly to the Board of Directors of the Moffitt Center to finance cancer research at USF.