Posted: 4:04 pm Tue, May 8, 2012 By BRIAN JOHNSON Tags: Architectural Alliance, Biomedical Discovery District, Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Metropolitan Mechanical Contractors, Mortenson Construction, Pete Nickel, State Designer Selection Board, University of Minnesota

The Cancer and Cardiovascular Research Building, under construction at Sixth Street Southeast and 23rd Avenue Southeast in Minneapolis, is part of the University of Minnesotas Biomedical Discovery District. The university is looking for a design team for a new $52 million microbiology building, the next big component of the Biomedical Discovery District. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)

Researchers who are trying to learn more about microbiology and infectious diseases are moving closer to getting a new home at the University of Minnesota.

The U of M, through the State Designer Selection Board, is seeking design and engineering services for a new $52 million building that will consolidate infectious disease research efforts at the university.

The building will be the next big component of the Biomedical Discovery District, a research campus located on a former grain silo site just north of TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. The district received funding from a $292 million appropriation from the 2008 Legislature.

Pete Nickel, a university project manager, said a design team will be selected in late June, with soil correction work beginning as soon as July 2013.

Design team selection will set the stage for the projects pre-design phase, which will shed more light on details such as the projects cost and the size of the building.

When the building opens in three years, it will house wet and dry labs, offices and work spaces and bring together research efforts currently housed in scattered sites throughout the Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses, according to the university.

On Monday, the Legislature provided a more modest boost for bioscience research when it included $13.5 million for an expansion of the Hormel Institute, a cancer research facility in Austin, Minn. That project, which is expected to begin within the year, will add 15 labs and improve space for the Hormel Institutes International Center of Research Technology.

At full build-out, the U of Ms Biomedical Discovery District will house up to 1,260 faculty and researchers, including researchers trying to find treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers and other diseases.

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University of Minnesota plans for next big building in biomedical district