This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It seems like construction never stops at the University of Utah's Health Sciences complex, and that leads to the question of whether there could be anything left up there to replace.

The answer is yes, but not for long. The university's latest project that would replace the last 1960s-era buildings used for University Hospital and the U. Medical School.

And the $423 million project would do more than just replace. It would also add a 75-bed rehabilitation hospital and something the U. is calling a "discovery center," which will facilitate more entrepreneurial and cross-discipline projects such as developing and marketing medical devices with the engineering and business schools.

Once completed, something on the order of $1 billion in facilities will have been built on the Health Sciences footprint in the northeast corner of the Salt Lake Valley. Including the Moran Eye Center, the Eccles Institute of Genetics and the Huntsman Cancer Institute, the complex is likely the largest concentration of high-tech construction in the state.

For this project, there is a sizable up-front commitment needed from the Utah Legislature to make it fly. An unnamed California family foundation has pledged $47.5 million for the rehabilitation hospital, but it's contingent on the state of Utah making its own $50 million commitment to the medical school.

So the university's leaders are making their pitch to the Utah Legislature this session. In addition to the $50 million commitment, the U. also needs legislative approval to borrow money through bonds for the project. The bonds would be paid off by hospital revenues, not taxpayers. Private donors are picking up the rest of the tab.

It's almost impossible to describe all that U. Health Sciences means to the state of Utah, but here's a shot:

• It's the second largest health care provider (behind Intermountain Healthcare), delivering state-of-the-art medicine to hundreds of thousands of Utahns. The addition of a rehab hospital on campus would provide for more continuity of care because fewer patients would be sent to rehab centers elsewhere.

• It trains most of our doctors and nurses. Some 82 percent of med students come from Utah. In addition to medical students, the U.'s clinics and hospitals provide clinical training for nursing and physician assistant students. And the U. is extending its reach to serve rural Utah through training and telemedicine over the internet.

• It conducts world-renowned research, particularly in the vastly important area of genetics. The U.'s population data base, already unsurpassed in the world as a catalogue of genetics and disease, has been expanded to 70 million people, past and present. For decades the database has helped researchers identify genetic markers, including the BRCA1 breast-cancer gene. Genetics research also produced Utah's only Nobel Prize, awarded in 2007 to Mario Capecchi.

Yes, $50 million is a huge amount in a state that strains to fund its schools adequately. For Utahns' health, education and economy, it's worth the money.