Larry Davis, dean of the College of Optometry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is excited about a new Patient Care Center approved for construction on UMSL’s south campus for the colleges of Optometry and Nursing.

The $17 million, 48,000- square-foot center and instructional building “will reflect the image of the fine work our students are doing,” Davis said.

For now, UMSL’s optometry students are making do with studying and seeing patients under the supervision of licensed optometrists in a renovated former residence hall for nuns called Marillac Hall.

“We’ve been able to do the best we can with it,” Davis said. “But we need this new building, and our greatest need is our clinical facility.”

The new facility is being designed by architectural firm HOK and will enhance and expand the eye care services offered through the existing University Eye Center at Marillac Hall.

Scheduled to open in the summer of 2016, the new building will include space for campus and community partners to offer complementary health care services, such as dental and primary care. UMSL has the only optometry program in Missouri, and it’s one of just 21 such college programs nationwide.

Paul Whitson, senior vice president and health care principal with HOK, called the planned Patient Care Center “essentially the new face to the south campus.”

Whitson said he enjoyed working on the building’s design. “The fact that there are and will be patients in a building on a university campus is an unusual situation,” he said. “It was a really big, but fun challenge. And it’s been a remarkably smooth process.”

The building will provide 35,000 square feet of clinic space for adult and child eye care, support space and 13,000 square feet of space that could be leased to other users. The project is being funded by $5 million from campus reserves and a new student fee that will finance $12 million in bonds. That fee will cost each optometry student $1,800 a year.

Bids on construction of the building are due early in December.

UMSL Chancellor Thomas George said nearly 80 percent of UMSL’s optometry students voted in favor of a new fee for the clinic. He said he was pleased that the students were willing to pay for better facilities.

“We don’t have a lot of money otherwise,” George said. “I call us the bootstrap campus.”

The new building’s two-story atrium will capture natural light and offer pathways to four service clusters, including adult eye care, pediatric eye care, contact lens eye care and primary health care. Each clinic will feature student-faculty consultation space and individual and group learning space and will promote collaboration among students, faculty and staff.

The improvements to the colleges of Optometry and Nursing are the first phase of more planned capital improvements for the UMSL campus. Future phases include plans for an additional 200,000 square feet to combine in one location all teaching and learning, research and administrative functions for the colleges of Nursing and Optometry.

Also currently under construction at UMSL are:

• A $36 million Recreation and Wellness Center. Funding for the center comes from an additional student fee of $19.25 per credit hour approved by students in 2012. The rec center is being built just south of the Millennium Student Center on the north campus. It is expected to be completed by the fall semester of 2015.

• A $32 million Science Learning Building. This four-story facility will house advanced teaching laboratories. The 75,000-square-foot building also will include a solarium/town center space that will serve as the crossroads of the science complex, bringing students and faculty together for a broad range of interactions. It is expected to be completed in about a year and is being financed through general campus construction funds.