Growing a health sciences campus
We're growing an entrepreneurial health sciences campus founded on elements that are essential for success:
- Spokane's top-notch medical community
- WSU's strength as a major research and land-grant university and our long history of teaching the health professions
- The opportunity to bring together complementary strengths of multiple higher education institutions
- A focus on leveraging applied research for a measurable impact on the health of individuals and communities
- Involvement of our design, education, and policy programs to strengthen the health care sector
- The opportunity to build a brand-new campus with multidisciplinary programs and an innovation culture and ecosystem in a prime urban location that serves a large rural region.
Learn about WSU accomplishments and activities in the health sciences. Read the recent proclamation by the WSU Board of Regents designating WSU Spokane as Washington State University's Health Science Campus.
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A look back at our history
Once the domain of Northern Pacific trains, Riverpoint is developing into a center of teaching and research excellence in the health sciences. Click "Play" above for a slideshow detailing the development of the Riverpoint Campus, past, present, and future.
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Riverpoint Campus master plan
The Riverpoint Campus master plan was updated in 2009 to help address changes and opportunities on campus and around us.
Our future as a biomedical/health sciences campus:
Includes working in partnership with the region’s health care community and private and public partnerships in the expansion of a four-year medical school;
Changes on campus:
Construction of the Biomedical Building and welcoming the WSU College of Pharmacy;
Changes around us:
Growth of retail, mixed-use, and housing development along West Main and on East Sprague, and expansion of the Convention Center on the west edge of the University District;
The future extension of Riverside Avenue/Martin Luther King, Jr. Way
along the south side of campus, enables major arterial traffic to bypass the center of campus;
An updated community vision
for our part of the city, expressed through the University District Strategic Master Plan in 2004 and the 2008 Downtown Master Plan Update.
See our Master Plan information page for details.
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Riverpoint Campus design principles
Vision
We envision a metropolitan Riverpoint Campus that sets the standard for urban revitalization through higher education community partnerships and targeted investment:
- Home for selected, globally competitive professional programs—primary emphasis on health science, design and environment, education, and business and entrepreneurship
- Creates knowledge anchor for the Inland Northwest, the community and University District—attracting talent, public and private investment, and other resources
- Competitive infrastructure connecting people, classrooms, labs, and information services to the world
- Fully integrated with neighborhoods and Spokane metro center
- Designed for full range of multi-modal transportation choices
WSU is committed to a thoughtful and participatory development process that results in an enhanced campus and community life.
The process followed and decisions made will reflect careful stewardship of the public trust, fiscal prudence and appropriate financial return, and best practices in land development, resulting in a high-quality, exciting development project that enhances campus and downtown living.
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Long-range planning
Maintain a flexible development policy that stimulates emergence of a globally competitive campus focused on research and the application of new discoveries.
Riverpoint development will:
- Be urban scale—integrated with, complementing, and expanding a vibrant Downtown Spokane and the surrounding neighborhoods, connected by streets and walkways that encourage pedestrian and bicycle traffic and reduce reliance on automobiles and surface parking lots, and utilizing environmentally sustainable design principles.
- Emphasize a mix of complementary public and private projects, including some university–community partnerships.
- Establish a strong, integrated campus infrastructure—IT and physical utilities.
- Emphasize partnerships and reciprocity with the private, public, and non-profit sectors, to enhance core academic activities.
WSU and higher education partners will focus state-funded investment to develop instruction, research and outreach programs, and facilities, and will seek partners to develop complementary services for students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders.
- Near-term growth of academic facilities at Riverpoint will concentrate primarily north of Spokane Falls Blvd.
- Since the 30 campus acres south of Spokane Falls Blvd. will generally not be needed for near-term academic program growth, WSU will pursue market-driven, mixed-use, environmentally sustainable private and/or partnered development of these properties for complementary campus services.
- WSU will consider whether some small-scale applications of this mixed-use development may be appropriate for the north side of campus.
- Design elements and treatment of traffic flow will provide convenient and safe links between north and south campus development.
- A sustainability focus will emphasize systematic solutions to build an expanding, healthy, economically strong, secure, aesthetically pleasing, and thriving campus.
- Complementary campus support uses include:
- Affordable housing for students and young professionals
- State-of-the-art technology and research infrastructure
- Clinical health, wellness, and recreation
- Distinctive shopping and dining
- Arts and entertainment
- Collateral business, retail, and services—office and laboratory above street level
Contacts
General
Terren Roloff
Office: 509-358-7527
Cell: 509-720-6245
terren.roloff@wsu.edu
Parking
Teresa Kruger
Phone: 509-368-6999
rpparking@wsu.edu
Campus-sponsored events
Becki Meehan
Phone: 509-358-7528
rmeehan@wsu.edu
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