A dedication ceremony was held at the construction site Tuesday.
The new structure will bring seven laboratories of five agencies scattered across the state under one roof, in a spacious building with state-of-the-art research equipment.
The consolidated laboratory building will provide space for:
* The Department of Health's Office of Laboratory Services, which is operating in three locations, including a 70-year-old building in South Charleston and two labs in a former elementary school building in Elkview. Among other things, the labs analyze drinking water quality and test medical cannabis for chemical or bacterial impurities
* The Division of Labor's Office of Weights and Measures lab, now located in cramped quarters in St. Albans
* Forensic labs operated by the West Virginia State Police and the Department of Homeland Security
Marshall University and West Virginia University also will have a presence at the new laboratory complex, according to state officials. The government agencies will retain individual control of their lab programs in the new building, which Charleston-based ZMM Architects and Engineers will design.
The state has committed $250 million to building the consolidated lab complex, Gov. Jim Justice said at Tuesday's groundbreaking event.
"Our laboratories have become ancient and dilapidated," the governor said. The new building will allow the state "to step up to take care of what's going to be needed in the future."
Design work on the project is scheduled to be completed early next year, with construction expected to be completed in 2027.
A 2022 West Virginia Office of the Legislative Auditor's report on the state's laboratory facilities concluded, among other things, that the labs "are relatively old, have insufficient space, and were not build for laboratory purposes."
The report also determined that every state-owned laboratory visited by an auditor's panel "had significant inadequacies and insufficiencies," including lack of space and long-overdue upgrades. The report recommended consolidating labs in a single, spacious and up-to-date building, as has been done with government laboratories in 16 other states.
The new building and its campus will make use of an already flat and deforested piece of Tech Center land that recently provided fill for South Charleston's new Park Place shopping center, off MacCorkle Avenue.
© 2024 The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, W.Va.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
