The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday, June 6, to celebrate the start of construction of a $53 million facility next to the Great Lake Research Facility at 600 E. Greenfield Ave., Milwaukee, for the School of Freshwater Sciences.
The new 100,000-square-foot facility will have classrooms, labs, faculty offices, meeting spaces and a lunch room.
“(The building) will greatly expand our ability to understand freshwater issues,” said David Garman, founding dean of the School of Freshwater Sciences. “The tools and technologies we will have in place when it opens will be second to none. Together with the new centers and programs we’re introducing at the School, UWM will be one of the preeminent places in the world to study freshwater.”
Built adjacent to the current Great Lakes Research Facility and serving as its front door, the new building will be home to the faculty and scientists of the UWM School of Freshwater Sciences, as well as their research teams and graduate students. It will house the Center for Water Policy, Great Lakes Genomics Center, laboratories for researchers and students, classrooms, quarantine facilities to allow researchers to acquire and study aquatic organisms from the Great Lakes, and a substantial expansion of the SFS aquaculture labs. Additionally, UWM engineering faculty who explore water technologies will have space on the top floor.
The project is expected to be complete by December of 2013.
