Jacksonville University is converting part of the former Virginia College space at Beach and University boulevards into a health care training center.
Construction is underway.
“This is a service-oriented operation with the intent to help our health-care partners in the area,” said Christine Sapienza, interim provost and senior vice president of academic affairs.
“This is just the beginning.”
In 2014, Sapienza led the formation of the Brooks Rehabilitation College of Healthcare Sciences and served as the dean.
She expects the Jacksonville University Healthcare Simulation Center will open Oct. 21 with a grand opening in January.
The goal of the center is “to help elevate the quality of patient care in Northeast Florida by offering interactive, skills-based training to healthcare professionals using high-fidelity simulation tools in a safe, controlled environment,” JU said in a statement.
It will work with its philanthropic supporters and business partners, such as Baptist Health, Florida Blue, CAE and the Cascone Family Foundation.
The center will offer customized curriculum and continuing education courses for health care professionals, particularly nurses.
It also “will focus on inter-professional training to improve communication and teamwork across disciplines as a simulated patient progresses through care.”
A simulation center at the university’s Arlington campus at 2800 University Blvd. N. trains JU students. The community center will serve professionals from hospitals and other health care organizations.
It will use high-tech simulator manikins, a prevalent practice in health-care training, so that procedures can be practiced before needed on a patient.
The training can be tailored to the needs of the organization seeking it.
Rimrock Devlin is the developer for the 19,000-square-foot project at 5940 Beach Blvd.
Partner Wally Devlin said Rimrock Devlin negotiated the lease with JU and has an exclusive option to buy the property. It is listed at $6.98 million, according to Colliers International.
The private Virginia College closed at year-end 2018. Greyhawke Capital Advisors of Greenwich, Connecticut, acquired the property in 2011 through Fudo Capital LLC.
The building was developed in 1979 as an Albertsons grocery store on 5.81 acres.
The JU Brooks Rehabilitation College of Healthcare Sciences created the Simulation Training and Applied Research Center program.
The STAR Center, which opened in September 2014, provides a simulated hospital environment.
It is designed for students to work as a team in health assessments, clinical skills, and complex medical care on manikins and on live patients.
It also provides graduate nurse residency program training for local partnering hospitals throughout the year.
Dr. Kathleen Kavanagh is the director of the STAR Center.
When that began for students, the college was asked by hospital systems to accommodate their nurse residents who were working while training. The requests accelerated.
The move will quadruple the 4,500 square feet of space now devoted to the community system.
Sapienza and Kavanagh said it will be open not only to its health care partners but also to any organization in the country that wants to become involved in simulated scenario training.
“With our academic expertise, we are able to develop and provide curriculum to each health care entity,” Kavanagh said.
They are partnering with CAE, a Montreal-based global trainer in the civil aviation, defense and security, and health care markets. They are working with the company in curriculum design and manikins that create realistic scenarios.
“When we built the original simulation center, there was not an intent to involve the community. They came to us,” Sapienza said.
She said it began when Baptist Health asked JU to provide simulation training in treating patients during the Ebola crisis.
“After that, both JU and the hospital partners realized there was a place here where they could do more of this knowledge- and skill-based training,” Sapienza said.
Kavanagh said the center brings together the health care industry.
“We are providing great care in our community right now, but there is also room for improvement. Why not do that together?” she said.
The location is across University Boulevard from Brooks Rehabilitation and Memorial Hospital.
Sapienza and Kavanagh estimate the center’s development cost at up to $2 million. In addition to JU financing, the program will include philanthropic and partner support.
Sapienza said they knew they wanted to open the center for more than a year. “When this opportunity came up, we moved quickly,” she said.
They said they learned of the opportunity about midsummer.
Colliers International Senior Director Gary Montour represented the landlord, Devlin and JU, in preparation for the lease.
The city issued a permit Wednesday for the project. Stellar Group Inc. is the contractor for the $238,880 job to renovate 18,345 square feet of space on the east end of the building, paint the exterior and restripe the parking lot.
It has 297 parking spaces.
Colliers posted signs on the property that say: “Join JU as Co-Tenant” in the 54,297-square-foot building.
Montour said he will continue to lead the Colliers marketing efforts to lease the remaining roughly 35,000 square feet of space.
“We are targeting a myriad of medical office and ancillary operations, along with various retail/office, and educational institutions,” Montour said by email.
Colliers International says in a marketing brochure that after Albertsons closed, the property was a Rowe’s supermarket from 2001-11. Virginia College then invested to convert the structure into an education facility.
