Delay threatens start date of $130m medical school
The University of Adelaide’s $130 million medical school project may be delayed because the State Government has not yet signed off on approval for the build.
Construction of the project is due to start early next year and be finished by 2016, but university leaders are concerned those dates may have to be pushed back because of the government’s seeming reluctance to sign.
“If it takes much longer, it will affect our construction start,” university vice-chancellor Professor Warren Bebbington told InDaily yesterday.
The university has received $60 million in Federal Government funding – to which it will add $70 million of its own funds – to relocate its east end medical school across to the site of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital in the west end.
But despite an official government announcement and the release of concept images in June, no one has yet signed on the dotted line.
Bebbington said he didn’t know the reason for the delay.
“We’ve been at this for 11 months. I had a letter from the Minister of Health which said this would be wound up by the 17th of June. It is now late July.
“There was a further message passed to us that it would be ready the day before the Prime Minister announced the $60 million (on June 15) – it wasn’t ready then, either.
“It’s a complicated transaction, but it’s just hard to believe that you can’t, as a government, with all that manpower, get all the players into one room to sort out whatever it is that’s holding it up. We’re ready to sign.”
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The medical school is to be built next to a new $80 million cancer research centre being partially funded by the University of South Australia. The two new buildings are slated for the western corner of North Terrace and Morphett Street, on the northern side alongside the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
State Infrastructure Minister Tom Koutsantonis did not respond to InDaily’s request for comment by deadline.
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