Yale’s new West Campus includes 550,000 square feet of laboratory space for both biological and chemical research. Medical research is a high priority for use of the new campus.

Yale closes on west campus

With the $109 million purchase in September of what is now known as the university’s West Campus, Provost Andrew D. Hamilton, Ph.D., is asking faculty and other leaders on campus for their ideas on the best use of the property—the 136-acre former Bayer HealthCare complex that straddles the neighboring towns of West Haven and Orange. Its 17 buildings have 1.5 million square feet of space for laboratories, offices and storage. In comparison the medical school campus occupies 2.5 million square feet.

“There will be a focus on a number of different areas for planning,” Hamilton said. “The first, of course, is science. The number one priority for the university at West Campus is the opportunity that it gives us to do things in biomedical science that we have not been able to do for lack of space.”

Other ideas under consideration include using the space for storage; displays of collections belonging to university museums, galleries and libraries; and outreach programs to local schools.

“Planning is for the long-term integration of the West Campus into the life—scholarly, scientific and medical—of Yale University,” Hamilton said. “It is not going to be an overflow campus. It is not going to be a place where we put things that don’t fit at the university.”

—John Curtis