Samuel Merritt University’s $240M campus to bring 2,000 students to downtown Oakland

Development is nearly wrapped on 525 twelfth St. in downtown Oakland, the brand new residence of Samuel Merritt College, Oakland’s 116-year-old Well being Sciences College.

In a couple of weeks, movers will load 315 truckloads of furnishings, tutorial papers, hospital mannequins and different medical gear, and drive simply over a mile from Tablet Hill to the college’s new campus, scheduled to formally open on Jan. 5, President Ching-Hua Wang mentioned. When it opens, the college will carry 2,000 college students and 500 college and workers to the town heart. Discovering a brand new campus for the college, which has outgrown the services it leases from Sutter Well being, was one among Wang’s first costs when she grew to become president in 2018.

Metropolis leaders are hopeful the transfer will revitalize downtown Oakland after a interval marked by empty storefronts and distant work insurance policies which can be cleansing up downtown streets.

“That is the place we began,” Wang mentioned whereas main a tour for metropolis and state officers on Thursday. “We need to increase our roots right here.”

At a time when Oakland’s larger schooling panorama is shrinking – Holy Names College Shuttered in 2023, Mills School confronted declining enrollment and monetary struggles earlier than turning into a satellite tv for pc campus of Northeastern College and the Peralta Group School District is contemplating a merger of its two Oakland campuses – SMU’s funding stand. It is also an indication that the healthcare sector stays sturdy. The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics initiatives 1.9 million vacancies every year in healthcare within the subsequent decade.

The 250,000-square-foot constructing will embody 41,000 sq. ft of simulation area—the place college students can apply situations in an genuine medical atmosphere—for aspiring healthcare professionals. SMU leaders hope to develop within the new campus and finally search to double the college’s enrollment to 4,000.

“We need to develop as a result of there’s a staggering want for well being sciences professionals and now we have a severe scarcity of nurses,” Wang mentioned.

About 1,000 college students graduate from SMU annually, most of them with levels in nursing, she mentioned. The overwhelming majority of them – 94% – are employed in California. In 2021, Forbes ranked Samuel Merritt College as a school with the Highest salary prospects for graduates with a bachelor’s degreeand a New York Times Report Confirmed SMU alumni with the very best median earnings amongst school levels ten years after commencement.

SMU’s new headquarters occupies what was the final remaining parcel of the Nineteen Seventies downtown Oakland redevelopment plan. The college owns the constructing and has signed a 99-year land lease with the town.

SMU will have a good time its 117th anniversary on Jan. 26 and maintain a grand opening ceremony for the brand new campus on Jan. 27, Wang mentioned. The college invested $240 million to construct the constructing, funded by a $140 million bond and $100 million the college raised.