OfficIals share a laugh while waiting for their picture to be taken with ceremonial shovels during a groundbreaking for Kansas University’s new School of Pharmacy. From left are Regent Gary Sherrer, U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway, KU School of Pharmacy Dean Kenneth Audus, director of state relations Kathy Damron, and Lt. Gov. Troy Findley. The groundbreaking for the new building, which will be located on KU’s West Campus, occurred indoors at the Lied Center on Tuesday because of the possibility of inclement weather.

Kansas University, state and federal leaders came together Tuesday to celebrate a major KU School of Pharmacy expansion in Lawrence and Wichita.

The expansion has gone through a number of battles in the Kansas Legislature to acquire funding, after bonding authority had to be diverted from gaming revenue that dried up.

In the end, as several leaders pointed out Tuesday, a need to address an ongoing shortage of pharmacists in the state led to the funding necessary to complete the expansion that will nearly double the number of pharmacists that KU can accept into its program.

A new $45.5 million, 110,000-square-foot facility is set to be constructed on KU’s West Campus near the Simons Biosciences Research Laboratories and the Multidisciplinary Research Building. Ken Audus, dean of KU’s pharmacy school, said preliminary timelines call for the building to be completed by August 2010.

That new building will join a new $4.5 million floor added to an existing building on the KU School of Medicine’s Wichita campus.

The construction is being financed with a mixture of state bonds and private donations, which are still being gathered, he said.

Audus said the space will all be used for teaching space and administrative offices, and the school will move out of its current home in Malott Hall.

Many of the politicians at the ceremony said the expansion would help the current shortage in Kansas, with six of the state’s counties with no pharmacies at all, and 69 others underserved for their needs.

“This investment is truly critical to the development of our state on a variety of levels,” Audus said.

State Sen. Vickie Schmidt — herself a pharmacist — said that 37 percent of the active pharmacists in the state were over the age of 50, so getting new pharmacists in the state would be critical.

U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran said that pharmacies were particularly important in rural Kansas.

“You lose your pharmacy, you begin to lose your doctors, you lose your hospital,” Moran said, saying what could happen if the pharmacist shortage were to continue.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Lt. Gov. Troy Findley, Kansas Bioscience Authority CEO Tom Thornton and KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway also spoke at the event, which took place at the Lied Center because of reports of inclement weather.