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UConn Health/Research Center Proposal Intriguing

Details, please, on $900 Million for a state version of the Research Triangle?

The Hartford Courant

May 15, 2011

Connecticut has elected a governor who thinks big, who wants to do grand things to restore the state's position as an engine of economic growth and keep it prosperous long after his time in office is over. Putting the state budget on sound fiscal footing is Step 1.

Mr. Malloy's nearly $1 billion vision for the renewal of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington as a regional magnet for medical care and bioscience research — a center that he says would draw federal dollars and private investment and hopefully forge ties to Yale University's scientific excellence — is breathtaking.

A state weary of recession is eager to hear more about the plan

The Courant's Rick Green has given intriguing hints of the project, which, done right, could do for the region what the Research Triangle has done for Raleigh-Durham (or what UConn2000 did for the University of Connecticut's flagship campus).

But the governor's plan is not ready for prime time quite yet. A region hungry for economic revival — a region aching to stop its brain trust from leaving for Cambridge and China — wants to hear more.

Mr. Malloy's proposed renewal of the UConn Health Center would cost almost twice as much as any previous plan — plans that have been discarded for one reason or another. Will this plan avoid their pitfalls? Will it help competing hospitals in Hartford? Will it make the UConn Health Center profitable once more? And how is the state going to finance it?

Details of the tantalizing proposal will be released in the weeks to come. But the vision of a 21st-century health center that is home to cutting-edge bioscience research is a perfect fit with Connecticut's needs and the abilities of its workforce.