Collaborative Research Reaches New Heights

Rice’s Collaborative Research Center has reached its full 10-story height, and the milestone was celebrated on March 28 with a topping off. This traditional ceremony involves placing an evergreen tree on top of a building after the structure for the final story is put in place.

The approximately 200 people who attended the ceremony applauded as a live oak tree — rather than the typical cut pine — was set on the building’s top story. The oak, which will be replanted on the grounds, is one of 45 trees that will be planted toward the end of construction.

Among the special guests who attended the ceremony were State Rep. Ellen Cohen, D-Houston; U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston; Jeff Moseley, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership; Peter Traber, president and CEO of Baylor College of Medicine; James Willerson, president of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; and John Mendelsohn, president of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The 480,000-square-foot building will have eight floors of research laboratories, a 280-seat auditorium, a 100-seat seminar room, classrooms, 10,000 square feet of retail space for a restaurant and shops, and three levels of underground parking.

Located at the corner of Main Street and University Boulevard and dedicated to biomedical and biotechnical research and teaching, the Collaborative Research Center is generating considerable excitement among a number of institutions in the Texas Medical Center as well as on the Rice campus. It’s not surprising. Few emerging areas of scientific inquiry are as crucial as biomedicine and biotechnology, and the Collaborative Research Center has the capacity to become one of the most powerful biomedical research facilities in the world.


The 480,000-square-foot building will have eight floors of research laboratories, a 280-seat auditorium, a 100-seat seminar room, classrooms, 10,000 square feet of retail space for a restaurant and shops, and three levels of underground parking. The plan also includes two stories of shell space to allow easy and rapid expansion as the project grows, along with the potential to build a second research tower atop the base platform that could add up to another 150,000 square feet. The facility, which will meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, is scheduled for occupancy in mid–2009.