TCU
An artist's rendering of the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine.
TCU officials very quietly and with no fanfare, save for leading man and Chancellor Victor Boschini, put shovels in the ground without ceremony on Friday, breaking ground on the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine complex on the Near Southside.
"The ground has been broken!" an email carrying a video of the event alerts. "Don't worry — you didn't miss anything! It's been a scorching Texas summer, so we thought it best to bring the groundbreaking to you! It's time for TCU's new medical school to have a new home. The Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University is building a four-story new home in Near Southside — and we wanted to 'premiere' it for you."
Duly noted.
The video "stars" Boschini, narrator Betsy Price, Fort Worth's former mayor, Stuart Flynn, the school's founding dean, and several medical students.
City and university leaders, as well as students and faculty, gathered at the site on South Henderson and West Rosedale streets on a February afternoon to announce that the vacant lot in the heart of the Hospital District would be home to the burgeoning TCU School of Medicine.
TCU official promised to break ground on the four-story, approximately 100,000-square-foot building late spring or early summer. Plans are to welcome students in 2024.
The building, termed the “academic hub for 240 medical students,” will house classrooms, labs, and offices. Additional facilities are part of the master plan for the 5.3-acre lot, which backs up to Trimble Tech’s baseball field.
Officials declined to release cost estimates at the time. Linbeck Group will be the general contractor, officials said. Architects are CO Architects and Hoefer Welker.
“This represents a unique expansion of our 300-acre main campus,” Boschini said then. “I think this will impact our students, more than anything, and that’s what this is about. Right now we’re program rich and space poor. This building will match the quality of our program.”
The medical school was created in 2015, a collaborative project with University of North Texas Health Science Center. The first class of students, which began study in July 2019, will graduate in 2023. The school’s fourth class will begin in July.
TCU and the Health Science Center ended their partnership earlier this year. As part of that separation agreement, TCU was leasing space at the Health Science Center. However, Boschini said in February that the School of Medicine would leave Health Science Center’s campus on Montgomery Street this summer, moving its base to the International Plaza in southwest Fort Worth while the new building is being constructed.
More recently, TCU announced that the school would carry the name of Anne Marion, the chief benefactor of the school after her estate made a second $25 million gift to The Anne W. Marion Endowment.