SHU officials not surprised School of Medicine lease took time

[caption id="attachment_14760" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Photo via the Seton Hall University Archives[/caption] The amount of time it took Seton Hall and Hackensack-Meridian Health to sign a lease for the new School of Medicine building comes as no shock, according to University officials.The school and Hackensack-Meridian Health have signed a 25-year-lease for a building that will become the new School of Medicine. The site is located in Nutley and Clifton, N.J. The building selected for the medical school belonged to the former Hoffman-La Roche biomedical campus, according to a press release sent out by Seton Hall’s Office of the Provost on July 14. Erik Lillquist, Associate Provost for Academic Projects & Professor of Law, said that negotiations over the lease lasted over a year and involved many parties: Seton Hall University; Hackensack-Meridian; Roche; the developer of the rest of the site, Prism; and the municipalities of both Nutley and Clifton. “Negotiations involving so many parties and such a large site are necessarily complex, and thus there is nothing surprising about the length of time it took to complete the lease,” Lillquist said. The site of the medical school, which will see Dr. Bonita Stanton serve as dean, will also be home to SHU’s College of Nursing and the School of Health and Medical Sciences. “This team-based approach will train students from medicine, nursing, occupational and physical therapy, and other related fields together to improve patient care,” according to the press release. Lillquist said that progress continues to be made. “Dean Stanton and her staff are hard at work on the accreditation process,” he said. “The signing of the lease was a significant milestone toward accreditation.” While the medical school is on track to open in the fall of 2018, “the exact schedule is always subject to the approval of the LCME (the accrediting body for medical schools),” Lillquist added. Seton Hall medical and nursing students can look to complete their clinicals primarily at Hackensack-Meridian’s hospitals. Brianna Bernath can be reached at Brianna.bernath@student.shu.edu or on Twitter @briannabernath.