Breaking Ground
ECU Officials Usher In New Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building
East Carolina University officials broke ground on the university’s latest construction project on Friday, a $90 million Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building funded through the Connect NC Bond Referendum.
The 141,500-square-foot facility will feature four stories with wet bench and computational laboratory spaces for researchers across a variety of academic disciplines. The building, located at the corner of 10th and Evans streets, will serve as the new home for the university’s department of biology and will house researchers with interests and expertise in the fields of biotechnology, bioprocessing, biophysics, biofuels, imaging and sensor development, and environmental engineering.
ECU Provost Ron Mitchelson said the new Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building will allow students to address real-world problems in the region.
Officials believe the building will serve as a gateway to ECU and eastern North Carolina, providing a dynamic environment where industry and community partners can engage with university faculty and students, while providing access to university resources to address problems, develop innovative solutions and make strategic decisions for future growth and development.
“Our argument for this new building that we break ground on today was a simple reflection of our mission,” ECU Provost Ron Mitchelson said. “We want to maximize student success and we want to lead regional transformation.
“So, we wanted a building that could address real-world problems in our region, involving our students creating innovative solutions to those problems,” he said. “Whether they be problems in manufacturing, or a hospital, or a military base, or out there in the natural environment of the coastal plain we love so much, they would help solve them.”
Programming in the building is expected to include bioprocessing, bioimaging and optical physics, genetics and computational biology, environmental engineering and environmental biology, and plant biology.
The building is expected to open in August 2021.
The biology department’s current home, the Howell Science Complex, was built in 1969. Since then, ECU’s enrollment has tripled from 9,258 students to 29,000. The department instructs more than 17,000 students each academic year with approximately 650 undergraduate and graduate student pursing degrees in biology.
According to the University of North Carolina System website, North Carolina voters “overwhelmingly” approved the $2-billion Connect NC Bond referendum in 2016. The bond allows the state to finance a variety of capital and infrastructure improvement projects across the system’s 17 campuses.
The construction manager at risk for the Life Sciences and Biotechnology Building project is Rodgers Builders. The facility’s primary design firm is Lord Aeck Sargeant, with other design partners including AEI, CLH, Lynch Mykins, The East Group and Thorburn Associates.