The UCF Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Thursday, to purchase 25 acres of land at the emerging Medical City in Lake Nona.
The land will be purchased for $15.1 million and used to build a teaching hospital within walking distance of UCF’s College of Medicine. With the land purchase, UCF’s Health Sciences campus will grow from 50 acres to 75 acres.
“It truly is, in my opinion, strategic. It would have been a great loss to us had we not acquired it,” UCF President John C. Hitt said after the approval of the purchase, centralfloridafuture.com reports.
Although the vote was a unanimous one, there are reports that the land purchase was a controversial one. This is because its value was seen as excessive in the context of a still-devastated real estate and housing market that have seen prices plummet at least 30 percent.
UCF will purchase the land from Tavistock Group, a privately held investment company that owns Lake Nona.
Meanwhile, UCF Board also approved increases in other fees, including on-campus housing rental fees, athletic and health fees and parking decal fees, centralflorida.com also reported. The new fee increases will take effect in fall 2012.
