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UCD to start on pharmacy building

Facility will bring boost in research, faculty, class sizes

By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 9, 2008 at 8 p.m.

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The University of Colorado Denver School of Pharmacy will break ground today on a new $59.5 million building, which will allow the school to boost research efforts and incoming class sizes.

The 165,000-square-foot Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, expected to be completed in late 2010, will allow UCD's pharmacy school to increase faculty size by 50 percent and class size by 25 percent, to 160 students a year.

The construction of the new building on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora comes as the U.S. is facing a rapidly accelerating shortage of pharmacists. Within two years, the number of prescriptions is expected to rise by 47 percent, but the supply of community pharmacists is forecast to increase only 7.8 percent, according to the school. By 2020, the U.S. is expected to be facing a shortage of 150,000 pharmacists.

The new building will "support our research mission, our education mission and our service and clinical care mission," said Ralph Altiere, dean of the UCD School of Pharmacy.

Three floors of the new four-story building will be dedicated to research, allowing the school to expand its pharmaceutical biotechnology program and create a formal drug-development center to focus on new medications. The pharmacy school already has both programs under way, Altiere said, but they don't have any room to expand at the school's current location at Colorado Boulevard and East Ninth Avenue.

"Right now we're landlocked," he said.

The pharmacy school consistently ranks among the top 10 schools in the nation in terms of National Institutes of Health research grants per faculty member and admits only about 1 in 10 of the nearly 1,200 applicants to its professional practice program.

The school is now spread out over different buildings but will consolidate into one space in the new building.

Altiere said he hopes the pharmacy school's location on Montview Boulevard next to a planned bioscience park will faciliate collaborations between the school and private enterprise.

The 577-acre site of the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center is now home to Children's Hospital and University Hospital, which moved last summer. Eventually, the area will support 66,000 jobs and $6.3 billion a year in direct and indirect economic activity.

The new pharmacy school is funded in part by an $11 million donation from the ALSAM Foundation, which is named after L.S. "Sam" and Aline Skaggs. Skaggs is often credited as the father of the modern drugstore chain, taking over his family's grocery store business to create American Stores. Albertsons purchased American Stores in 1999.

davisj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2514

Pharmacy's future

* The University of Colorado Denver School of Pharmacy's new 165,000-square-foot building will cost $59.5 million and is expected to be ready by December 2010.

* The new building will allow UCD's pharmacy school to increase faculty size by 50 percent and incoming class sizes by 25 percent.

* By 2020, the U.S. faces a projected shortage of 150,000 pharmacists and a shortfall of 650 faculty.

* By 2010, the number of prescriptions dispensed is expected to rise 47 percent but the supply of community pharmacists is expected to increase only 7.8 percent.