Versiti Inc. plans to develop a new blood research building on the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center campus that could house more than 100 new jobs.
The new facility would be designed to accommodate the growing team of researchers at Versiti's Blood Research Institute in Wauwatosa. The Milwaukee-based organization plans to add 10 to 15 investigators at the BRI over the next few years, said Chris Miskel, president and chief executive officer. Each of those new investigators are likely to bring with them research teams of as many as 10 employees, creating potentially as many as 150 new jobs and drawing many new hires from outside the state.
“There’s a job creation piece to it, but it’s also enhancing Milwaukee’s reputation for doing cutting-edge science that’s going to impact patient care in the years to come,” Miskel said.
Versiti is a Milwaukee-based nonprofit operator of the BRI and community blood centers across the Midwest and Texas. Its work spans basic, translational and clinical research focused on blood disorders, and its researchers work collaboratively with colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Froedtert Hospital and Children’s Wisconsin.
Currently, Versiti has between 25 and 30 NIH investigators working from its building at 8733 W. Watertown Plank Road on any given day.
“Within the last three to five years, we’ve talked about a vision to expand to somewhere between 40 and 45 investigators,” Miskel said.
Versiti has issued an RFP and plans to engage architects this year on plans for a new building that would be located adjacent to its existing building on land it already owns, Miskel said.
Versiti purchased its 4.7-acre plot on the MRMC campus in 2020 for $1.06 million after leasing the land from the county for many years. Children’s Wisconsin, Froedtert Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin all purchased their portions of the campus at the same time, in a move that MRMC officials said would simply the management of the campus and expedite decision-making related to infrastructure and future development.
Responses to the RFP will help determine the size and cost of the new building. Costs are likely to be in the "several tens of millions of dollars," Miskel said.
Versiti plans to fundraise a portion of the project cost and seek government funding.
“While we have some strength in our balance sheet, we would prefer to have some fundraising support and some state or local government support,” Miskel said. “We’ve seen the government support others that are doing buildings in the past, particularly when you’re bringing high-paying jobs to the city.”
In 2021, Versiti hired Dr. Michael Deininger as its director of the Blood Research Institute. Deininger is now working on a few key investigator recruitments that would build momentum for the expansion plans, Miskel said.
“I think, if in six months to a year, we have architectural designs, we have Mike having recruited two or three new researchers from outside the state, we start to get tighter in our existing building – it will start to get full – that will be the inflection point for us saying ‘We have to break ground and start our new building,’” Miskel said.
Building a new facility next to the existing BRI building is a priority because of the high level of collaboration between Versiti and MCW, he said. Researchers are currently able to access each of those buildings via an underground tunnel.
"Because of how much our investigators flow back and forth and collaborate with MCW's investigators, they need to be right there. Those collisions that happen when you're around people that drive innovation in science, you have to have those collaborative spaces and that proximity," Miskel said.
