Building Fact Sheet
SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute at SIU

• The permanent facility for the SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute at SIU in Springfield is being designed to serve as a center of care and hope for patients from around the state.

• The design provides a welcoming, secure and uplifting feeling for patients who come to the institute for care, signaling strength and hope with a combination of traditional brick and great expanses of glass. A central 'spine' of glass runs through the building, providing natural light on the upper floor .

• The Capital Development Board (CDB) will manage construction of the 60,000 sq. ft. building. It is being designed by Hanson Professional Services of Springfield with consultation from BSA Life Structures of Chicago. Total cost is approximately $21.5 million. Detailed building drawings and specifications are now being finalized and construction bids will be requested this fall. Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2006 and completed in 2008.

• The institute building will face east on a partial city block (two-plus acres) bound by Carpenter, Rutledge and Miller Streets, a few blocks from downtown Springfield. Six medical buildings, five belonging to SIU, are located to the north in the next three blocks along Rutledge.

• The building for the institute will be three stories tall with its main entrance on the corner of Rutledge and Carpenter. It will consolidate the School's multi-disciplinary cancer clinics, now located in several hospital buildings, along with research and outreach service programs.

• The building features an open, two-story lobby. Chemotherapy suites will be on the first floor along with two clinics to be used by SIU's organ site working groups, teams of cancer specialists and subspecialists. A resource library, a support group meeting room and a multi-purpose conference room for public programs and medical meetings all will be on the first floor. One clinic will have eight exam rooms and two procedure rooms for patients with prostate and gastrointestinal cancers. A second clinic will have 12 exam rooms and two procedure rooms for treatment of general, lung, and head and neck cancers.

• The Women's Cancer Care Center for treatment of breast and gynecologic cancers will be on the second floor with eight exam rooms and rooms for diagnostic imaging procedures. The institute’s administrative offices will be on the second floor as well as offices for the physician faculty and nurse coordinators. The area will house an outreach center, focused on activities for downstate Illinois such as epidemiology studies and public and physician education. The area also will house the clinical trials office, which coordinates research involving patients, including national drug trials.

• The third floor will contain translational and bench research labs where research scientists and physicians can work together, and offices for researchers and support staff. The labs will augment the eight new cancer research labs already developed in existing medical school buildings. (Note -- Translational research focuses on understanding the basic molecular mechanism of the formation of tumors (known as tumorigenesis) as well as identifying markers for early detection.)

• The SIU Board of Trustees approved plans for the institute in 2000 and the General Assembly approved $14.5 million for design, land acquisition and construction in 2002. The School also sold $6 million of revenue bonds in order to increase the total budget for the building.

• The SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute at SIU has a web site at http://www.siumed.edu/cancer/. The main phone number is 217-545-6818.

• Note : Two JPG images are available on request or via http://www.siumed.edu/news.