Construction on New Cancer Center Continues
August 18th, 2015

A construction worker helps raise a support beam into place during a ceremony at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center. (Photo courtesy of UNMC)
In a little more than a year, the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center will be open and serving cancer patients from all over the world.
The 615,000 square foot facility on the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s campus is the largest project ever for the University, and one of the largest for the state, totaling around $323 million.
A large portion of the money needed for the project, almost a third, is coming from public funds. The Nebraska Legislature said it would put $50 million towards the facility, the City of Omaha pledged $35 million over five years, and Douglas County pledged $5 million over 5 years.
Nicholas Woods is a breast and ovarian cancer researcher who will work in the new Buffett Cancer Center.
“It was good to see the local community was very involved in generating the income and support needed to build a new cancer center to provide state of the art cancer care for the people of Nebraska and the research to go along with it,†Woods said.
Over the past 6 months, support beams were sent around the state to different events, and signed by local residents. The beams are meant to be symbolic of the partnership between UNMC and the people of Nebraska. Thousands of people signed the nine beams, which were put into place during a ceremony last week.
The event marked the completion of the structural framework for the Buffett Cancer Center, and the Center’s director, Dr. Ken Cowan, said it will be the best place in the world to receive cancer treatments.
“We’re within a year, year and a half of opening up this really transformative state of the art facility that will benefit cancer patients from across the region, the state and even nationally and internationally. It’s really going to be a unique place,†Cowan said.
The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is scheduled to open in the spring of 2017. It will provide an estimated 1200 jobs at the medical center and infuse $537 million annually to the local economy.
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