UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa -- The Board of Trustees approved a proposal today (Nov. 10) for the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center to purchase leasehold improvements to about 23 acres of land on the east side of the 550-acre Hershey campus for $57.4 million.
In 2006, Penn State entered into the build/lease arrangement with LHRET Hershey, L.P. to construct 30 Hope Drive. Thirty Hope Drive is a clinical operations facility with outpatient care spaces and departmental faculty and administrative office spaces currently rented by the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. The current occupants include Orthopedics, Neurology, Neurosurgery, the Breast Center, Radiology and others.
The leasehold purchase results in the transfer of the master lease between the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and LHRET to the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Penn State. The payments will help Penn State Health fulfill the commitment to advance the bio-medical and health research and education missions. The University, through its College of Medicine, will use the annual payments to help finance debt for the Innovation Pavilion, a new research and education facility currently in the planning stages. The vision is for a 330,000-square-foot building on the Hershey campus that will house more than 60 new labs and contemporary learning spaces for medical students. The purchase of the 30 Hope Drive facility continues the mutually supporting financial relationships between the clinical and academic enterprises of Penn State’s academic health system.