Plan for UNLV health building axed amid tension with development group Plan for UNLV health building axed amid

Two years ago, officials celebrated the construction of UNLV's $125 million medical school building that arrived cheaper and earlier than expected — but they had greater ambitions.

The goal? To create a mental and physical health building on the school’s campus that would house UNLV’s mental health programs and an outpatient care center to serve as a breeding ground for UNLV medical students and shore up Southern Nevada health disparities. Officials estimated 200,000 people could be served annually by the outpatient center.

State lawmakers approved $35 million in federal pandemic funds for the outpatient center, and the donors who bankrolled the medical school building were to cover the rest of the project, expected to cost nine figures.

Now, the project is no more.

The building plan collapsed earlier this year amid a deteriorating relationship between the university and the Nevada Health and Bioscience Corporation (NHBC), the development group behind the medical school building and the new clinical building, according to documents and interviews.

The saga of the worsening relationship included a proposal from NHBC to amend the original agreement with UNLV, a counterproposal that was dismissed “with no input whatsoever” and feuds about the upkeep of the medical school building. It has resulted in an uncertain future for the full development of the 9-acre medical school campus.

“It’s a significant loss for the community,” said Warren Hardy, an NHBC lobbyist. “It’s a free building for crying out loud.”

Hardy, a former Republican state senator, said UNLV repeatedly acted in bad faith and that donors who funded the medical school building may be unlikely to financially support the university in the future. Meanwhile, UNLV President Keith Whitfield said the university could not agree to the terms requested by the donors but was committed to rebuilding the school’s relationship with them.

The tension marks another potential financial blow to UNLV, which learned in May that one of its top donors, the Engelstad Foundation, would no longer be supporting the university because of a “poor and unacceptable” relationship with the university’s leadership and the dean of the medical school.

In a letter announcing her decision, Kris Engelstad, the foundation’s CEO and an NHBC board member, wrote that leadership’s actions “have effectively stifled” several projects, including the mental and physical health building.

Hardy anticipated a murky relationship between the other NHBC board members and UNLV in the future.

“I would be surprised, frankly, if the rest of the board ever did another project with UNLV,” he said. “There was disrespect shown.”

Whitfield, meanwhile, acknowledged the relationship has not improved this year, but he said he hopes it will in the future.

People mingle during a cocktail hour at the grand opening event for the Kirk Kerkorian Medical Education Building in Las Vegas on Wednesday, October 5, 2022. (Daniel Clark/The Nevada Independent)

The new building

The construction of UNLV’s medical school building was completed in 2022, leaving an extra $20 million that the donor group wanted to use to jump-start other medical projects, Hardy said.

Both sides favored the construction of the clinical building. It would have housed UNLV’s mental health efforts (that are currently part of the school’s main campus) and an ambulatory care center — which is a general term for an outpatient facility — that would also function as a training opportunity for UNLV students and medical residents. The building also was expected to have a component specializing in pediatric cardiology.

“Mental health and physical health go hand in hand together,” Whitfield said. “So one of the goals that we had as a university was to try to find out ways in which we can try to make better links between the two. And this happened to be something that the folks from NHBC and the donors behind them were interested in as well.”

State leadership was on board as well. In August 2022, the state’s Interim Finance Committee (IFC) — a group of lawmakers that makes funding decisions when the Legislature is not in session — approved using $70 million in pandemic relief funding for UNLV’s medical school: $35 million for the clinical building and $35 million for a public health laboratory that would mirror a similar laboratory at UNR. This funding was part of more than $150 million in approved pandemic funds for public health projects.

“[T]his facility will support improved public health education and services to create teams that are better prepared for potential future health care crises or pandemics,” the state proposal for the building said.

But last month