The new USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute officially opened Jan. 8, 2020, when USF friends, legislators, donors, supporters, faculty, staff and students cut through a long white ribbon, signifying the culmination of nearly five years of design and construction on the 13-story building that will help attract the best in education and research.
Plans for a new USF medical school began in 2011, when Carol and Frank Morsani gave $20 million, a gift that aimed to create a dramatic new education center for USF Health. Then, plans shifted to downtown Tampa in 2014, when Jeff Vinik, through Strategic Property Partners, made an offer to USF – an acre of land in the heart of his $3 billion redevelopment of the Water Street district. Throughout an 8-year period,
our state legislators have invested, and our Governors have approved, the expenditure of over $110 million in taxpayer funds into the construction of this facility – the largest such state investment in any state university facility in the history of the Board of Governors of the State University System.
