Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik will donate land for downtown USF medical school

TAMPA — Jeff Vinik wants the University of South Florida to build a new medical school on his downtown property so badly that he's willing to give the school an acre of his land to seal the deal.

The Tampa Bay Lightning owner made the offer this week to USF president Judy Genshaft and Dr. Charles Lockwood, senior vice president for USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine, according to a university spokesman.

"It would be a gift from Mr. Vinik to the university," said USF spokesman Adam Freeman, "and it would be contingent upon the Morsani College of Medicine and USF Health Heart Institute being built in that location."

Vinik's offer was made public during Wednesday's meeting of the USF Board of Trustees health workgroup, a committee that oversees USF Health's academic and medical programs. A Vinik spokesman declined to comment.

The donation from Vinik would satisfy a make-or-break condition for the project laid down by Genshaft: Last week she told the Tampa Bay Times that the university would build a downtown medical school only on donated land. She said USF would not buy any downtown property for the proposed project.

But bringing USF's new medical school to downtown would satisfy an important part of Vinik's plan to redevelop downtown Tampa.

The Lighting owner has amassed a significant chunk of southern downtown around the team's home at the Amalie Arena: the Channelside Bay Plaza outdoor mall, the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina and 24 empty acres around the arena.

By the end of the year, Vinik is set to unveil his plans to transform the area into a walkable entertainment district with room for retail, residential, hotel and office space. He's already planning to build a new high-rise hotel west of the arena.

But Vinik also wants to attract major employers in high-end industries to his redevelopment project, including a downtown medical school.

The land that Vinik has proposed donating to USF is "about an acre," Freeman said, at the corner of Channelside Drive and S Meridian Avenue, across the street from an arena parking lot Vinik owns next to the Tampa Bay History Center.

An acre is big enough for a substantial building.

For example, the nearby site for an 8- to 10-story office building once envisioned as a potential new headquarters for the tech firm Syniverse measures about eight-tenths of an acre. Vinik later withdrew the plan, which had called for an office building with 202,000 square feet of space.

Last week, USF pitched a new medical school to a Florida Board of Governors committee that could be up to 142,000 square feet. But USF also said if the medical school goes downtown, it might be built in conjunction with the proposed $50 million USF Health Heart Institute. That 100,000-square-foot project already has a potential site on the main campus.

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A downtown medical school already has the support of one of USF's biggest donors: Frank Morsani, who has pledged $20 million to help build the new facility. USF also plans to receive $62 million from the state for the project.

"Those are two new facilities that we are in the process of getting the funding through legislation to build," Freeman, the USF spokesman, said. "What hasn't been decided yet is the location of those facilities. Our Board of Trustees has not made that decision yet."

Genshaft and the board hope to make that call before the Board of Governors meeting set for Jan. 21-22 at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Freeman said.

The only sites USF is considering for its medical school are the main campus or the land offered by Vinik.

"It's a matter of building the facility downtown in that location or building on the current campus," Freeman said. "That's the only decision that has to be made."

Contact Jamal Thalji at thalji@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3404. Follow @jthalji.