First BIO5 building topped-out in style

March 15, 2005

By hammersmith

The traditional ‘topping-out’ ceremony of the upcoming BIO5 building at UA was held in early March before a crowd of university officials, researchers and local press.

The $65.5 million Thomas W. Keating building, which will be the arterial structure of the wide-spanning research collaborative, will house nearly 300 researchers in its 177,000 square feet. A press release indicated that the building’s architecture is designed to promote “intellectual collisions” among faculty and researchers from different disciplines on their way to the break room.

About a quarter of the 100 current BIO5 faculty will be housed in the Keating building upon its completion, which is slated for Spring 2006. Thomas Keating, a Tucson philanthropist and UA alumnus who gave $10 million toward the building project, was on hand for the symbolic beam-hoisting. The rest of the money was revenue from taxpayer-approved Proposition 301.

“Our history of collaboration gives us a one-up on putting all these teams together,” BIO5 Director Vicki Chandler told the Arizona Daily Wildcat at the ceremony.

The center’s interdisciplinary research projects have already raked in $49.6 million in new and continued federal grants. The five focal points delineated in BIO5’s name are basic science, agriculture, medicine, pharmacy, and engineering.


For more information:

BIO5 building adds last steel beam,” Arizona Daily Wildcat, 03/08/2005

UA news release, 03/01/2005

UA Regents Professor and geneticist charts course for BIO5,” 02/23/2005