UK Markey Cancer Center begins construction on a new building soon: Here’s what to know.

Shovels will start flying Thursday as work begins on a new home for the University of Kentucky’s Markey Cancer Center.

Construction is to begin on the $885 million cancer and advanced ambulatory center Thursday. The site on South Limestone will consolidate Markey’s services to one building, according to Markey Cancer Center director Dr. Mark Evers.

Markey currently occupies space in more than six UK Healthcare buildings.

“We’ve doubled in size in the last 10 years in terms of patients, but our relative footprint -- that was the buildings that were originally built in the late 1980s and early 1990s -- have basically been the same,” Evers said.

“We’ve been forced to renovate spaces that have been available. Currently there are four places where patients could go to get their chemo infusion, which is horrible. You may go to one place one day, and then the next week go to another place. It really is difficult for patient care.”

Construction is to finish in 2027, and the center will start moving that summer. The project it to include a 550,000-square-foot medical center and a 2,400-space parking garage.

What happens to the current Markey footprint? UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said officials have yet to decide.

UK received philanthropic support for the new center, Evers said, but that money is reserved for clinical programming, not to cover construction costs.

Standing eight stories tall with an additional underground floor housing radiation medicine, the building will help Markey expand its clinical trial offerings and increase cancer screening rates across the commonwealth, Evers said.

When approved in 2022, UK estimated the cost to be $500 million excluding the parking garage. Now, the clinic alone is estimated to cost $781 million, a 56% increase. Evers said the extra cost is because university officials decided to only “shell” one floor instead of multiple, increasing the cost.

Shell floors are left empty for future expansion.

Evers said the shell floor will accommodate the growth the center has seen since he took over as director, growing patient volume from 60,000 in 2009, to 93,000 in 2023.

“It’s sort of the mantra, you build it and they will come,” he said.

What it means to patients

The current Markey Center takes up 228,237 square feet across six buildings. In the new cancer and ambulatory service center, 300,000 square feet of space will be dedicated solely to cancer services.

The cancer center will also hire 40-50 more physicians over the next 10 years, Evers said.

Along with more clinical trial offerings, the expansion of the cancer center will bring a space dedicated to CAR T-cell therapy which lets doctors teach patient’s own immune systems to attack cancer.

Evers said CAR T-cell therapy eliminates the need for some patients to get chemotherapy.

“Those possibilities of obtaining really cutting-edge therapies that are directed towards the patients’ mutations is a huge deal for our Kentucky population, because this is the only place that they’re going to be able to get that,” he said.

What will be inside the new building?

One floor of the building will be dedicated to a new outpatient spine care clinic, bringing together physical medicine and rehabilitation, orthopedics, neurosurgery and anesthesiology to treat back pain.

The greatest advantage to patients: Consolidated services.

Instead of sending patients to different buildings to complete part of their spine care work-up, it all will be located on one floor. Dr. Craig van Horne, chair of neurosurgery, said having the four departments on one floor will help tackle the long wait times spine patients currently face.

“Everything will be available for the patient in one setting,” van Horne said.

“Right now, if you wanted to get in as a new patient visit, there’s about an eight-week delay. Then, if it’s decided that you do need surgery, there’s another six week delay to get into the operating room. We can’t get our patients in fast enough.”

The new layout will expand physical therapy offerings, which is especially important since roughly 80% of patients seen for a first evaluation at UK’s neurosurgical clinic don’t need surgery, officials said. Having non-surgical spine care all on one floor will give patients the help they need faster.

“If you have spine issues, back pain, one of the things that’s limited is gonna be mobility. You can imagine having to get in and out of a car and traveling -- that’s a lot,” van Horne said. “It eliminates a lot of that. You’ll have everybody working together as a team. The coordination of care is going to be really valuable.”