Employees of the Medical College of Wisconsin have begun moving into the school’s newly opened Hub for Collaborative Medicine, a 320,000-square-foot office building in the center of the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa.
The new eight-story facility, which is connected to the school’s existing Medical Education and Health Research Center, is designed as a collaborative office space for students, researchers and clinicians.
The building can house as many as 1,500 employees. Moving clinicians into the new building will free up clinical space at Froedtert Hospital that previously held offices, officials said.
The building is located on the north side of Connell Avenue between the MCW’s medical education building and Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratories. Officials broke ground to begin construction on what was originally planned as a six-story building in the spring of 2016.
The building consists of enclosed offices, modular workstations, conference rooms, break areas and informal collaboration spaces.
“This is a complete win-win,” said John Schreiber, chief executive officer of Medical College Physicians. “It allows us to pull together faculty in a very innovative space where there is interface and interaction.”
The setup allows for collaboration between clinicians and researchers, which can lead to more discoveries, officialS said.
“I’m seeing people I really haven’t seen for months because it’s pulling us all together,” he added. “There are a lot of discussions and stimulation in terms of new ideas, which I think is the intent.”
Milwaukee firm CG Schmidt was the general contractor for the project and Madison-based Flad Architects led the architectural and engineering design team. The Concord Group of Milwaukee consulted on the project.
