Tulane University has completed a $35 million renovation of its Hutchinson Memorial Building, delivering almost 50,000 square feet of new laboratory space across two floors of the downtown New Orleans facility.

President Michael Fitts joined School of Medicine leaders on Jan. 14 to mark completion of the project, which rebuilt the building's fifth and seventh floors from the shell up. Both floors underwent full demolition and reconstruction. Combined, they will house more than two dozen lead researchers and their teams.

The work took 14 months and was designed to meet LEED Silver standards, the nationally recognized framework for energy-efficient construction. Contractors integrated new mechanical, engineering and plumbing systems into the building's existing infrastructure rather than replacing it wholesale — a retrofit approach that budget planners at other institutions considering similar downtown lab conversions may want to examine.

What will the new labs actually do?

Dr. Lee Hamm, senior vice president and dean of the Tulane School of Medicine, said the project will target the university's largest research areas: cardiovascular disease and neurologic conditions such as stroke and dementia.

The facility also dedicates space to in silico research, where students and researchers work with genetic and biochemical population databases to identify disease patterns computationally.

"[We] collect a bunch of data, and then by putting the information together using the powerful computing that we have today — and in some cases artificial intelligence — [we] can uncover disease pathways that we didn't understand previously," Hamm said.

The design intent is collocation. The development "creates a center where you have clinical people, in some cases clinical scientists, working with basic researchers," Hamm said. "You're building a research ecosystem that can directly impact people."

Hamm characterized the project as transformative for both the university's research infrastructure and patient outcomes in the Gulf South — a claim that, like any institutional projection, will rest on the grants, publications and trial activity the new space attracts over the coming years.

Who funded it, and what comes next?

Hamm credited the Tulane Innovation Institute with a crucial funding role in the downtown campus development, including the Hutchinson project, by connecting university innovations with investor networks. The downtown buildout also draws on partnerships with the Downtown Development District and the New Orleans BioInnovation Center.

The Hutchinson renovation sits within a broader expansion of Tulane's downtown footprint. The university has planned a multi-million dollar redevelopment of the former Charity Hospital, a project that remains contested in ongoing legal battles over public control of Wisner funds and city council involvement.

For R&D managers, the Tulane project offers a data point on the cost and timeline of converting aging academic medical buildings into modern research space: roughly $700 per square foot over 14 months, achieved through full gut renovation while keeping the building's core infrastructure in service.

The university has not yet announced which specific research teams will occupy the new floors or when the first studies will begin operating there.