Stowers Institute Lays Ambitious Plans for K.C.

Let's say you want to build the best biomedical research facility, bar none. The catch is, it will be in Kansas City. Can you still hope to lure top scientists away from their prestigious postings in world capitals to an untested center in Missouri? Philanthropists Virginia Stowers and James Stowers Jr. think so. And they have a plan to make it happen. On 10 acres across the street from the University of Missouri, the foundations already are being laid for their six-story, 594,000-square-foot Stowers Institute for Medical Research, the first phase of which will open in the year 2000. Construction is being financed by $125 million in tax-free municipal bonds. That expenditure alone won't fill the site with quality researchers, but what could do the trick is the institute's $335 million endowment, intended to eventually provide about 600 scientists with freedom from the necessity to compete for research grants. The money comes from $166 million personally contributed by the Stowers-a gift that ranks them fifth in Fortune's list of the 40 most generous Americans in 1998-and $169 million from the sale of the four-year-old institute's shareholdings in American Century Investments. Founded by Stowers in Kansas four decades ago, American Century is now one of the nation's largest mutual fund companies. This year, it finalized a strategic partnership with J.P. Morgan & Co., the 150-year-old bank holding firm of New York City. The institute's endowment ultimately will be augmented by most of the Stowers' estate, including American Century stock now worth $875 million. "If we want this [facility] to be the best there is in the world, we have to be able to attract the very best scientists," Stowers emphasizes. "We have to." He says he was frequently advised that such a complex must be situated on the West Coast. When someone suggested to him that an alternative would be to fund a large laboratory on the University of Missouri campus, his response was, "You don't understand. The scientists have to be able to believe in your dream, and they have to be able to see it." The terms of the endowment are that 3.5 percent of the total must be spent annually on medical research. The plan is to spend no more than that 3.5 percent, keeping the balance in American Century mutual funds. Stowers estimates that this strategy will allow the endowment to double every 10 years, reaching about $30 billion after 25 years. He notes that Leroy Hood, who holds the chair in molecular biotechnology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told Stowers that he must spend about half his time in an effort to obtain research money. Hood, chairman of the institute's scientific advisory board, is a co-inventor of the DNA sequencer. The principal investigators, who will be recruited worldwide, are expected to eventually number 50 to 60, each of whom will have about 10 researchers. Disciplines within the institute will be determined by the scientists, although Stowers adds, "My wife and I have both had cancer, so that has to be a focus at the very beginning." The Stowers hired two architectural firms to help realize their dream. Kansas City-based Peckham Guyton Albers & Viets has primary responsibility for the exterior and overall design. MBT Architecture of San Francisco, which has won numerous awards for laboratory work over the past four decades, is designing the interiors. MBT Senior Vice President Tulley Shelley comments, "It's clear that Virginia Stowers in particular is very interested in making this a place that honors the people and the work they will be doing there." He adds, "We've taken the best from the best and are applying it to the Stowers Institute." He divides the center's design innovations into three general categories: planning, structure, and mechanical systems. The floor plan is based on two-person "modules" that will provide 150 square feet of space per bench worker. The peninsular benches will be removable to make larger modules for up to 28 researchers, or could be separated by walls to create private spaces. "There's inherent flexibility in a modular plan," Shelley observes. "This also gets back to that old argument: Is visual contact [with others] in a lab a good thing or a bad thing?" Tel: (916) 926-4000; Fax: (816) 444-8644 MBT believes that usually, although not for all activities, visual contact stimulates sharing of information, ideas, and interdisciplinary knowledge among scientists. Accordingly, windows, doors, and corridors will be aligned to provide views outside, across, and down the complex. Perhaps the biggest challenge is to integrate the new building with structures retained from a hospital that previously occupied the site. The new section will have ceiling heights of nine feet and wings 150 feet wide, compared to eight-foot ceilings in the old buildings and 50-foot-wide wings. Creating an interface between the two halves "was a very interesting problem to work out with stairs and elevators," says Shelley. Given reduced duct space for air and water intake and exhaust in the old hospital, MBT devised a vertical distribution system of "supershafts" installed every 50 feet along the wings, permitting service lines to be "fingered in" to the benches. Another mechanical system innovation involves the vivarium, where repetitive functions such as moving the mice and cleaning their cages will be automated. Shelley says the prevailing architectural concept of "value engineering"--decreased cost while maintaining functionality--has been reversed in the case of the Stowers Institute. "We're engineering in value," he declares. "If it makes sense to do, it will be done." Steve Bunk is a contributing editor for The Scientist.

Stowers Institute Lays Ambitious Plans for K.C.

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