USF's CAMLS Project Grows In Downtown Tampa

Construction on the University of South Florida's (USF) Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) is on track, significantly increasing USF's presence in downtown Tampa.

The 90,000-square-foot project designed by the Beck Group will be the first USF-owned building in downtown Tampa, joining space the university leases at the Port of Tampa in the Channelside neighborhood.

CAMLS will provide a state-of-the-art training and research facility closer to Tampa General Hospital and MacDill Air Base, allowing USF to work with health care professionals while looking at new systems of delivering health care that will improve patient safety, reduce medical errors and improve patient outcomes.

“CAMLS will provide USF with an urban campus space as well as an extremely efficient building for all different types of medical education and training,” says Dr. Deborah Sutherland, VP of USF Health Continuing Professional Development and CEO of USF Health Professions Conferencing Corporation (HPCC).

Built on a 1.2-acre site at 211 S. Florida Ave., the five core components of the three-story CAMLS building will consist of its Surgical and Interventional Training Center (SITC), Education Center (EC), Virtual Patient Care Center (VPCC), Tampa Bay Research and Innovation Center (TBRIC) and 30,000 square feet of general education and office space.

“This building really puts everything under one roof. We will have the ability to work with the life-long learning needs of health care professionals, the military and our hospital partners to provide adequate training and education,” says Sutherland. “Students will benefit by being in a state-of-the-art facility as they are taught the latest and most complex medical procedures while learning alongside clinicians.”

With completion slated for Feb. 2, 2012, the CAMLS project is currently on budget. Funds for the $38 million project were provided by Build America Bonds and HPCC, a not-for-profit corporation run by Sutherland; the budget includes everything from construction to medical equipment to furniture.

“The downtown community has been very welcoming of this project,” says Sutherland. “From an economic development perspective, I think it's really going to bring some much-needed revitalization to the downtown area.”

Writer: Alexis Quinn Chamberlain
Source: Dr. Deborah Sutherland, University of South Florida