Pharmacy college unveils building

WORCESTER As the ceremonial red ribbon fell away today from the new six-story optometry school of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, so too did the fear of a weed-filled abandoned hotel site blighting downtown.

What opened in its place at 10 Lincoln Square is a vision of a bustling downtown with continued expansion of economic activity and academic enterprise that will lead to a doubling of the number of MCPHS students in Worcester at a college with the 21st optometry school in the United States.

After the old Crowne Plaza went into receivership and closed in 2010, the pharmacy and health sciences college bought the property.

The $10 million, 54,000-square-foot building that opened next to the former hotels 243-room, 9-story building will open to students in the four-year optometry program in August.

It will feature an optician store with optometrists that will open to the public July 25. There will be 24 examination rooms, each with $85,000 worth of the latest equipment.

The 10 Lincoln Square Academic and Student Center facility already houses 200 students.

City Manager Michael V. OBrien thanked the colleges trustees and President Charles F. Monahan Jr. that they were standing not in a vacant hotel or weed-filled lot, but in a transformative enterprise that will fill downtown with activity and show businesses the economic potential of Worcester.

Mayor Joseph M. Petty called it another amazing project that continues the positive change happening in downtown Worcester. He said he is heartened by the white coats many of the white-coated students and staff of the school were among the 260 at yesterdays ceremony who are transforming the citys business district into an 18-hour thriving environment.

Mr. Monahan, a Worcester native who still lives here, recounted the history of the school in Worcester that started with 125 pharmacy students in 2000. It currently has 250 faculty and staff in Worcester and 1,200 students from 44 states and 11 countries and will double the number of students in three years, he said.

While the MCPHS campuses in Worcester and Manchester, N.H. (400 students) are for graduate-level students, the original campus in Boston, which dates to 1823, has 4,500 undergraduates.

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Pharmacy college unveils building