Hall Family Foundation Donates $15M for UMKC Hospital Hill Project

The Hall Family Foundation is donating $15 million toward the construction of the planned medical and dentistry building in the UMKC Health Sciences District on Hospital Hill.

“This new building will enable UMKC to expand its important work in equitable and inclusive health care delivery and we are inspired by the collaboration between UMKC, Children’s Mercy Hospital and University Health that improves the lives of people in our community,” Mayra Aguirre, Hall Family Foundation president, said in a statement.

The donation is the latest contribution for the planned $120 million Healthcare Innovation and Delivery building, which received a $30 million gift from the Sunderland Foundation last October.

The state has approved $40 million for the plan. Another $10 million also has been pledged, bringing the total raised for the project to $95 million, according to a UMKC press release.

“We are grateful to the Hall Family Foundation for its investment in our students and the Kansas City community,” UMKC Chancellor Mauli Agrawal, Ph.D, said in a statement.

“The Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Building will further solidify the UMKC Health Sciences District as a national leader in medical education and health care as well as support our mission of increasing health equity in the Kansas City region and beyond.”

The multi-story facility planned for the corner of 25th and Charlotte is intended house new dental teaching clinics and expanded medical school teaching facilities, according to a release from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The 93-room La Quinta located at 2321 Troost is one of the spinoff projects near Hospital Hill.

In addition, it will provide space for the UMKC Health Equity Institute, the university’s Data Science and Analytics Innovation Center and its new Biomedical Engineering program.

In recent years, the healthcare complex on Hospital Hill has become a major employer in downtown Kansas City. Between 2002 and 2019, it grew from 7,548 employees or 6.8 percent of the downtown workforce to 12,251, 10.6 percent, according to the Census.

Over the past decade it’s also triggered more than $550 million in new construction.

That figure includes more than $234 million invested by private developers building new apartments and commercial projects on the surrounding blocks along Troost, the East Crossroads and near Crown Center.

Many of the residents and customers for those hundreds of new apartments and new businesses work or study at Hospital Hill.

The new Healthcare Innovation project is expected to be a catalyst for developing the UMKC Health Sciences District into a major regional academic medical center that can generate billions of dollars in jobs and economic impact, according to the release.