UH Board of Regents authorize negotiations with Townsend Capital for Phase II of the Kakaako site occupied by the John A. Burns School of Medicine

University of Hawaiʻi
Contact:
Carolyn Tanaka, (808) 956-9803
Mia Noguchi, (808) 956-9095
External Affairs & University Relations
Posted: Dec 16, 2005

HONOLULU, Hawaiʻi — The University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents yesterday authorized the university administration to enter into exclusive negotiations for a real estate development agreement with privately held real estate investment firm Townsend Capital, LLC (Townsend), for the development of Phase II of the site currently occupied by the new facilities of the John A. Burns School of Medicine in Kakaʻako.

Townsend‘s team includes the design and technical team of Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership and GPR Planners Collaborative, Inc., and the general contractor, McCarthy Building Companies, Ltd. The primary team members for the Phase II project are essentially the same as the ones selected by the university for the Cancer Research Center project.

Townsend is a privately held real estate investment firm headquartered in Baltimore, Md., with offices in Missouri, Colorado and New Jersey. The firm has provided custom solutions to the real estate needs and issues of universities, university research parks, health care systems, and corporate clients for more than 30 years.

Representative clients of the firm include the University of Pennsylvania, Children‘s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Maryland in Baltimore, Washington University in St. Louis, AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Tyco International.

Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF) Partnership is a 350-person full-service architectural firm headquartered in Portland, Ore., with offices in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., with a diverse range of public and private projects located in urban markets. Representative clients include the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, John Hopkins University, Cornell University, University of California at San Diego, Amgen and Pfizer.

Townsend‘s general contractor, McCarthy Building Companies, Inc., was founded in 1864 and is one of Americaʻs oldest privately held construction firms. Headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., McCarthy also has seven full service offices located across the country. It has planned and designed over 500 laboratory facilities for institutional, government and corporate clients. As a joint venture partner with Kiewit Pacific, McCarthy is constructing a new facility for Kaiser Moanalua Medical Center.

Approval of a developer is the first in a series of steps toward the development of Phase II of the site on which the two new education and research buildings of the John A. Burns School of Medicine were opened earlier this year. Townsend will now enter into negotiations with the university for a comprehensive real estate development agreement that will cover planning, design, financing, construction and management of the project.

The university received 7 responses to its Request for Qualifications (RFQ) issued in March 2005.

The School of Medicine is located on a portion of the 9.9 acre site on the Kakaʻako waterfront. It was envisioned that there would be two phases which, when completed, would provide more than 507,000 square feet of educational and research space. The Ground Lease for the site provides for a second phase that would include a research building of 190,426 square feet and a 350-stall parking structure that would be constructed adjacent to the building housing the central plant. Phase II would be located on the site of the current surface parking lot.