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Oregon Health and Science University’s Board of Directors approved the construction of a new School of Dentistry facility at the university’s Schnitzer campus at a meeting on Thursday.

The dental school will be an additional tower on top of the OHSU/Oregon University System Collaborative Life Sciences Building, the first building that will be constructed at the university’s new waterfront campus. The tower will replace the former home of the school, which is old and has inadequate clinical facilities, said Allan Price, President of the OHSU foundation.

鈥淭he old facility had $25 million in deferred maintenance,鈥� Price said. 鈥淚t would have been expensive to maintain.鈥�

To address the issues of the school’s aging home, OHSU convened a committee to discuss the future of dentistry and the school. That committee concluded that OHSU foundation should try to raise the funds to move the entire school to the waterfront campus. The cost of that project will be $70 million, out of which $43 million will be funded through philanthropic donations. The remaining cost will be covered with $20 million borrowed by the university and $7 million from School of Dentistry operating funds, Price said. To this point, the school has raised $27 million of the required philanthropic contribution.

A design team of Portland-based SERA Architects and Los Angeles-based CO Architects are designing the Collaborative Life Sciences Building this summer. The team will incorporate the additional facility into the design, Price said. The 125,000-square-foot addition will bring the building’s total square footage up to 700,000. Price expects a groundbreaking for the building to take place in late fall.

This is the second time the OHSU board has approved an addition to the building; in April, it approved a $30 million, 20,000 square feet addition for the OHSU Center for Spatial Systems Biomedicine.