Centre for ‘ageing’ research within three years
THE head of Newcastle University is confident that new buildings can be on the former General Hospital site within two to three years as the institution looks to create a worldleading centre for ageing research.
University vice-chancellor Prof Chris Day said he had been trying to acquire the site for more than a decade, but was hopeful that progress could be made on developing research facilities into ageing and vitality.
Prof Day said the university’s success in developing the Helix site in Newcastle city centre – formerly known as Science Central – would help it attract investment to the hospital site.
And he was confident that plans for research facilities, room for businesses and residential units would not take as long to come to fruition as the city centre plot.
He said: “The advantage we have over the Helix development is that there’s university presence there already. Add to that the track record we’ve got at Helix now, which shows that we can deliver this sort of thing.
“The things we’re talking about will require funding, but with our track record and the fact that the ageing society has been identified as one of four grand challenges in the Government’s Industrial Strategy should mean that developers and the Government will be really interested in what we’re trying to do.
“We can be relatively confident that we should be able to raise sufficient money along the way, along with our own reserves, to put up the first buildings on the site in the next two or three years.”
Prof Day said the future of EU students in the UK and a review of higher education funding did pose big uncertainties for universities like Newcastle, but would only affect the hospital site plans in terms of how much of its own funding the university used, and how much external investment it sought.