AURORA, Colo. – A major component of Colorado’s bioscience and health care industries received an economic boost to help it contribute to the state’s economy. The city of Aurora received a total of $16,320,000 in funding to complete the final phases of the I-225 and Colfax Avenue/17th Place interchange that will serve the Anschutz Medical Campus and Fitzsimons Life Science District. The Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) Board of Directors approved the funding from the Additional FY 2010-2011 Formula Funds that will allow for the completion of Phases 3 and 4 at its regularly scheduled board meeting last night. The new interchange has an overall price tag of approximately $46 million.

Phase 1 of the new interchange has been completed and Phase 2 is well underway. Phase 3 includes the completion of a slip ramp which will provide access to southbound I-225 from 17th Place as well as the 17th Place bridge that provides access between Fitzsimons and I-225. Phase 4 includes the portion of the 17th Place bridge that allows two-way traffic to travel over I-225 and it will create access points both to and from the bridge for northbound I-225.

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By Steve Raabe
The Denver Post

Children’s Hospital is preparing to launch a $228 million expansion that will add 124 new beds to its Aurora hospital.

Upon projected completion by the end of 2012, the addition is expected to bring at least 500 new jobs to the hospital’s workforce of 4,000.  Construction is expected to begin this week.

Officials said rapid growth at the hospital, now with 298 beds, mandated the expansion several years before it was anticipated.  Children’s moved in 2007 from central Denver to the Anschutz Medical Campus at the former Fitzsimons Army base.

“Even with our new facility, we’re full and needing to increase capacity,” said Jim Shmerling, president and chief executive of Children’s. “The surprise to us is in how quickly we’ve needed to expand. We originally were looking at expansion five to seven years down the road.”

The 10-story addition will be financed by $108 million in cash reserves from hospital operations, $60 million in revenue bonds and $60 million from the Children’s Hospital Foundation.

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By Joey Kirchmer
YourHub.com
Denver Post

Construction is set to begin this summer on a new state-of-the-art health and wellness center at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.

A groundbreaking ceremony was originally set for Tuesday, but officials on Monday said it has been postponed to later this summer. When the event happens, it will kick off construction on the 100,000-square-foot facility at the corner of East Montview Boulevard and Quentin Street. The $26 million wellness center is being funded though grants from the Anschutz Foundation and the University of Colorado, said James Ellis, director of operations for the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s Health and Wellness Center and the Center for Human Nutrition.

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Holli Baumunk, Vice President of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation for the past seven years, has been named President & CEO of the Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) July 12.  An accomplished economic development executive, Baumunk was chosen last year as Colorado’s Economic Developer of the Year by the Economic Development Council of Colorado, and is well known to many in the Colorado Bioscience Industry, having worked closely with the CBSA on numerous initiatives over the years.

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University of Colorado Hospital is planning a $400 million expansion on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora that will bring 1,000 permanent new jobs to the area.

Meanwhile, the hospital also is planning a $20 million expansion of the University of Colorado Cancer Center.

Both expansions are necessary because demand for services has increased substantially, said Bruce Schroffel, the hospital’s president and chief executive.

“The hospital is seemingly too small for the community,” Schroffel said. “We want to make it a destination from a national perspective and serve the entire Rocky Mountain region. As we’ve gotten more specialized, we’ve seen more patients from surrounding states.”    Read entire article

By Margaret Jackson
The Denver Post