FSU Health Opens Its $137.5 Million Research Building in Tallahassee and Names It for Wilton Simpson
The 137,000-square-foot building on the Tallahassee Memorial campus puts 150 researchers, simulation labs and a 12,000-patient family medicine practice under one roof - the largest single step yet in FSU's build-out of an academic health system in the capital.
Florida State University has opened the biggest piece of its growing health enterprise in the capital city. FSU cut the ribbon Friday, October 30 on its new FSU Health Research and Collaboration Building, a 137,000-square-foot, $137.5 million facility on the FSU Health Tallahassee Memorial Hospital campus, and the university's Board of Trustees voted the same morning to name it the Wilton Simpson FSU Health Research and Collaboration Building.
The building brings clinicians, researchers, students and community partners under one roof. Its first floor houses the FSU Family Medicine Residency practice, which serves more than 12,000 patients a year; the second floor is simulation space replicating operating rooms, hospital rooms and a fully equipped one-bedroom apartment for training; and the third and fourth floors are biomedical and translational research labs, including wet labs for tissue culture, biobanking and gene-editing work. The facility will accommodate more than 150 researchers and is projected to generate more than $217 million in annual economic impact, support more than 350 permanent jobs and attract $40 million a year in grant funding.
The naming honors Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson, who as Florida Senate president in 2022 championed the project and helped secure $125 million in construction funding and an additional $20 million in recurring funding. 'If you care about your community, you care about the quality of care,' Simpson told the crowd of more than 250 at the ceremony, in remarks published by the university. The opening comes weeks after FSU and Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare finalized the long-term agreements behind FSU Health in late September, a partnership that also includes a future FSU Health hospital in Panama City Beach expected to open in 2028.
