I'll preface this by saying I work in Facilities Management at VCU, the University, not the health system. VCU Health is a separate entity from the university but there are several people who have dual roles. It is important to understand that context. This is a major screw up, there is no other way to say it. The site in question is the Public Safety Building in downtown Richmond. The city abandoned the building several years ago and the property is highly coveted by both the university and health system due to its location adjacent to the Academic Medical Center Campus (MCV Campus). When the Navy Hill development died, thankfully, (another long story). the city issued an RFP for developers to redevelop the site. The developer that was selected proposed several buildings which included a large office building to be leased to the VCU Health System, a new child care center for the health system and relocating the non profit Doorways which houses families of out of town patients. Then came COVID, the health system, as many employers did, re evaluated there office needs. The developer scaled back the project and proposed a research building. The city saw this as bait and switch and declared the developer to be in default and took back the land under a quit claim. The terms of the lease agreement were not made public and included a $73M payment for failing to sign the lease. It also included that VCU Health would also pay the city a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) until the city could find another buyer. This is $1.3M per year +/-. The agreement also specified that the health system would pay to demolish the building. All of this for property that they don't own. The cost will be closer to $80M when all is said and done. Ridiculous. The public is calling for heads to roll and they have. Over the past 12-18 months, there have been several high profile "resignations" including the CFO and CEO of the health system. Those of us on the universty side were unaware of the terms of this lease and were scratching our heads over all of the resignations but now it all makes sense. We heard about this at the same time as the general public. No university funds were used in this and this is squarely on the health system and not the university. The president of the university is also the president of the health system board and it is not clear what he knew or when. The proposed Dentistry project is separate from this deal and would be state/university funded and is completely separate from the health system. Our Dental school has obsolete facilities and is in dire need of a new building. There is no available land on the campus and this site is perfect for it, both location and size. Of course the university would need to acquire the property first. This screw up is good news/bad news for the project. The site is available so that's good but the publicity may mean that elected officials are reluctant to fund our dentistry project, which would be unfortunate. There is an article in today's Richmond Bizsense about the investigation into this and it basically says there was little oversight into the deal. If this were a university project, the terms of that ease would have been reviewed by our Capital Assets and Real Estate group as well as university counsel. I can confidently state that the university would never have agreed to these terms.