The University of Dubuque has purchased a downtown Dubuque building to serve as the home for its proposed medical school, which is slated to open in 2028.
University officials announced Wednesday that the school acquired the three-story, 117,000-square-foot building at 500 Main St. that previously was home to Prudential Financial.
The acquisition follows the university’s announcement in December that it would seek approval to open the John and Alice Butler College of Osteopathic Medicine, named in recognition of a $60 million donation from the couple for its development.
UD is currently pursuing the necessary accreditation through the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation. Osteopathic physicians take a whole-person approach to their care and consider not only symptoms but also the impacts of lifestyle and environmental factors, often focusing on preventative care.
If approved, the school — which aims to enroll 800 students when fully operational — would be the first new medical school in Iowa in 125 years.
UD President Travis Frampton said the Main Street building’s large size was attractive to university officials, as it offers ample space for the medical school to grow.
“It’s centrally located in the heart of town, accessible and in an area that is conducive for supporting the students, staff and faculty that will be there,” Frampton said of the location. “This is a win for our community, because this is their medical school, too.”
The building at 500 Main St. was originally constructed to house health care and insurance company Cigna, according to Rick Dickinson, president and CEO of Greater Dubuque Development Corp.
Cigna eventually sold its retirement and investment division to Prudential, which called the Main Street building home for nearly 20 years until Prudential sold its retirement services business to Empower in 2022.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Empower shifted to virtual operations, and although Dickinson said the company still has a “significant” area employee presence, the vast majority of those individuals work remotely.
“The building (at 500 Main St.) has been vacant for several years, so this is a great adaptive reuse of the facility,” he said. “It will put Dubuque on the map as a medical school community.”
Frampton declined to share the purchase price for the building but described it as a “good deal” for the university, which made an offer below the asking price.
Preconstruction on the 500 Main St. building will begin next week, with renovations expected to start in September and wrap up by December of 2026. Conlon Construction will serve as the general contractor on the project.
Frampton said work on the exterior of the building will be minimal, with some updates to give it greater consistency with the rest of UD’s campus.
Meanwhile, the inside of the building will be transformed to house classrooms, laboratories, lecture halls, conference rooms, meeting areas and administrative and admissions offices.
The newly acquired building also will serve as the future home of UD’s existing physician assistant master’s program, which is currently housed on the university’s main campus.
“In the professional world, both of those (professions) need to be able to collaborate, so creating a learning environment where that collaboration can take place is another way of differentiating both of those programs,” Frampton said.
He added that relocating the physician assistant program also will free up space on UD’s main campus.
“That gives an opportunity for our nursing program to experience growth and potential expansion, as well as (creating) space for other health professions’ majors that we can develop to create pipelines for the PA and the DO programs,” he said.
Dubuque Mayor Brad Cavanagh praised UD’s intent to locate the medical school on Main Street as a “community-minded” decision, touting the likely benefits that downtown shops, restaurants and other entities could see from an influx of medical students in that area.
He also pointed to the city’s focus on downtown housing developments in the past several years, including several within walking distance of the proposed medical school’s location, such as 36 apartments currently being constructed at 799 Main St.
“That’s going to be very helpful when we’re talking about students wanting to live close to where they’re attending school,” he said. “We’ve been pushing forward so much on creating housing in the downtown area, and it’s been for purposes like this, so that we can welcome a new organization like this when they’re ready to move in.”