Inside The Pearl medical innovation district
More than a med school: The Pearl aims to be a medical innovation district, attracting researchers, startups, and biomedical companies
The following article appeared in the October 2, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
12 must-know features and quirky details about The Pearl, Charlotte’s new medical innovation district
The lobby of the Howard R. Levine Center for Education, seen here on a recent construction tour, will be a bright and airy space. (Photo by Emily Barnes/Atrium Health)
By Michelle Crouch
Co-published with N.C. Health News
Charlotte’s first-ever med school is almost here. By next summer, if all goes according to plan, Charlotte will no longer be the largest U.S. city without a four-year medical school.
The Charlotte campus of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine will open in 2025, with its first class of 48 students set to arrive next August. Enrollment is expected to increase to 100 students per class over the next five years.
But the med school is just one piece of a larger transformation underway on the 20-acre site known as The Pearl in Midtown/Dilworth, just outside of uptown.
The Pearl aims to be a bustling medical innovation district — “a Silicon Valley for health care” — set to attract not just students, but also researchers, tech startups and biomedical companies.
Atrium Health and Wexford Science & Technology are driving the $1.5 billion development. The first phase includes two buildings rising near Baxter and McDowell streets: a 14-story education center (The Howard R. Levine Center for Education) and a 10-story research building (the Research 1 Building).
The structures are connected on the second floor by a raised bridge, adding a physical link between education and research.
Future phases of the project call for more research buildings, a hotel, multifamily housing and street-level retail.
The Ledger/NC Health News recently toured the construction site with Atrium and Wexford representatives and assistant city manager Tracy Dodson, who oversees economic development for Charlotte. We also chatted by phone with an administrator of the Wake Forest University Medical School.
Here are some of the big and small things we learned:
1. The Pearl is not just a med school
When Dodson talks to people about The Pearl, she said they often assume that she’s talking about the medical school. She’s quick to tell them that “it’s so much more than that.”
She said when she first heard about the project five years ago, she, too, didn’t fully grasp its potential impact.
“How quickly they have transformed this space, and how much more really is to come … It’s the most transformative thing we’ve seen here in decades,” Dodson said.
She said The Pearl — along with a similar Wexford innovation district in Winston-Salem and Research Triangle Park in Raleigh — are paving the way for North Carolina to become a leading life sciences hub.
2. Space is filling fast, more floors added
Strong demand prompted the developers to expand the research and education buildings’ plans by two floors each, said Collin Lane, enterprise senior vice president of facilities management for Atrium parent Advocate Health.
The research building, slated to open in June, is already 70%-85% leased, he said.
The anchor tenant is IRCAD, a French surgical-training institute that is setting up its North American headquarters on four floors.
The institute is expected to draw thousands of surgeons to Charlotte each year to learn new surgical techniques, test and refine surgical devices or develop new ones.
Several other tenants have committed and will be announced in the coming months, Dodson said.
Lane described IRCAD as a “super-magnet” attracting businesses, physicians and innovators that will help position Charlotte as an “epicenter for the medical device industry.”
3. A ‘surgical ballroom’ for hands-on training
Instead of a traditional “operating theater,” where students learn a new technique while watching a single surgery from above, surgeons at IRCAD will train in a so-called “surgical ballroom.”
It’s a large open space with 26 training stations (and the ability to accommodate up to 45). Each station is a fully equipped operating room with surgical tools, imaging and patient simulations, so physicians can practice different advanced surgical techniques simultaneously.
The facility will have a “surgical ballroom,” like this one in France run by surgical-training institute IRCAD. (Photo courtesy of IRCAD)
4. Plug-and-play space for healthcare startups
A 35,000-square-foot space in the research building is dedicated to Connect Labs, offering prebuilt lab and office space for small biotech companies that need access to specialized equipment without the steep cost of building out their own facilities.
It’s part of the plan to create a collaborative environment where startups can innovate alongside established researchers, students and clinicians, helping to accelerate discoveries, Lane said.
5. A tribute to Brooklyn neighborhood
The Pearl is taking shape in the former Brooklyn neighborhood, home to Charlotte’s largest Black community before urban renewal destroyed it in the 1960s.
A walking trail will connect The Pearl and Pearl Street Park, the first African American park in Charlotte, and serve as a walking history museum. It will include three pieces of art from the local minority art community and signs with QR codes sharing Brooklyn’s history, Lane said.
At the entry to both buildings, an outdoor plaza called “Jacob’s Ladder” will provide space for community gatherings or small events. The plaza’s name and design honors a public school in Brooklyn that served Black children and symbolizes The Pearl’s commitment to upward mobility, Lane said.
6. Hotel and ‘chef-driven’ restaurant to cater to visiting surgeons (but open to everyone)
The thousands of surgeons who come to IRCAD for training will need a place to stay and eat, and developers have plans to deliver both.
Construction is expected to start next year on a 200-room “high-end boutique” hotel that is “attached to one of the national brands,” Lane said.
In addition, Atrium and Wexford are in talks with several restaurant groups for a chef-driven restaurant that will open in the lobby of the research building, Lane said.
“We want to have a celebrity-chef type concept,” he said, “but we let the market know what we're trying to do and seeing what they come back with.”
7. Med school applications at record level
Applications to the Wake Forest University School of Medicine have already surpassed last year’s record of 12,100, and they are still coming in, said Dr. Roy Strowd, vice dean for undergraduate medical education at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
It’s hard to know how much of the boost is due to the new campus, but Strowd said, “I think there’s buzz. The word is out about the campus and about the school and the growth.”
Students applied to the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and not a specific campus but will be able to indicate their preferred campus during a later phase of the process, Strowd said.
8. Anatomy without cadavers? It’s happening.
Students at the new medical school won’t work with cadavers, Strowd said. Instead, they will explore human anatomy and how disease affects the body using a virtual tool that’s like a giant iPad, Stroud said.
Students will be able to rotate body parts, zoom in and peel back layers of the human body to study different body systems and structures.
They will also use plastinated specimens – real human body parts preserved with plastic resins (like those in Body Worlds exhibit). (Cadavers will still be used at the school’s Winston-Salem campus.)
9. Crown and lights fit for the Queen City
The Pearl’s buildings, like many of Charlotte’s skyscrapers, will feature crown-like structures on their roofs, paying homage to the city’s namesake, Queen Charlotte.
The buildings will also join some 30 other buildings across town with color-changing lights, so they can light up in Panthers blue on game days or green on St. Patrick’s Day.
On the taller education building, lights in recessed channels will form the letter “Z” on the side of the building, symbolic of ascension and another nod to the theme of upward mobility, Lane said.
The buildings, outside of I-277, will have lights that can change colors, like towers in uptown. (Ledger photo)
10. Mock operating rooms, labor and delivery units
The education building includes more than 30 classrooms and lab spaces, designed to accommodate between 12 and 250 students, to be shared between the different programs.
In addition to the med school, the building will house Wake Forest School of Business programs, its new School for Professional Studies and the Carolinas College of Health Science, which trains nurses and other health care professionals.
A lot of the learning will happen in high-tech simulation rooms that mimic real-world medical environments, Lane said. These include mock operating rooms, labor and delivery units, trauma rooms and ambulatory clinics.
There's even a mock apartment where students can train to administer in-home care.
11. Coming soon: School field trips
The project includes a STEM lab designed to get younger students excited about careers in science, technology, education and medicine.
Atrium Health is working with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and other educational partners to create the program and build a hands-on curriculum, Lane said. It will provide free, year-round learning opportunities for middle school students, with plans to eventually expand to high school students.
12. Future docs to connect with community
New students at Wake Forest University School of Medicine-Charlotte will learn about ways to volunteer in the city during a half-day community engagement fair early in their first semester, Strowd said.
In addition, up to half of the school’s students are expected to join the school’s Service Learning Scholars program, a certificate track in which students typically complete 120 to 160 hours of service over four years.
That community work not only enriches their learning but strengthens their ties to the region, Strowd said, increasing the likelihood they will remain in North Carolina for residency and potentially long-term practice.
Michelle Crouch covers health care. Reach her at mcrouch@northcarolinahealthnews.org. This article is part of a partnership between The Ledger and North Carolina Health News to produce original health care reporting focused on the Charlotte area.
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Video: Economic development director on The Pearl
🎥 WATCH: Charlotte economic development director Tracy Dodson (wearing a hard hat and safety vest on a recent construction tour) discusses the potential impact of The Pearl, the new medical innovation district under construction. It’s a 40-second video. She says it’s “by far one of the most transformational projects for Charlotte that we have seen in recent decades.”
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