The University of Toronto is gearing up to build a brand-new home for its pharmacy department, at a cost of $70 million and a few historic greenhouses.

The proposed site of the new building—on the north-west corner of University and College—is already occupied by a complex of elegant white-framed greenhouses.

The greenhouses, built in 1931, are listed in the City of Toronto’s inventory of historic properties.

In plans submitted to the U of T administration Tuesday, the pharmacy department offered to preserve one section of the greenhouse by moving it to another location, possibly one of the suburban campuses.

Pharmacy dean Wayne Hindmarsh said that while it’s sad to see the greenhouses go, the department desperately needs a new building.

“We’re the only pharmacy school in Ontario and there’s a tremendous demand for pharmacists,” Hindmarsh said.

The department has been slowing increasing enrolment but there isn’t room on campus for the current students.

It is hoping to double enrolment to 240 graduates per year once the new building is ready.

It is also adding a new program, the B.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Science, which will teach drug development and quality control.

Pharmacy students currently use a building at the corner of Huron and Russell, which administrators say is too cramped to accommodate the additional students.

The department also uses space in the Koffler building.

The new building has strong support from pharmacy students who complained about a lack of meeting space, the cramped pharmacy library, and line-ups to use computers in planning questionnaires.

Alex Kuo, the head of the undergraduate pharmacy society, said the current situation isn’t working.

Students only have one meeting room for group projects and the current lecture hall isn’t big enough.

“When a guest speaker comes in, people have to sit in the aisles,” he said.

Though the pharmacy department expects to break ground next summer, the building isn’t expected to be ready for students until the spring of 2005.

It will be named the Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building in honour of the distinguished 1954 alumni who founded Novapharm, a major Canadian pharmaceutical company.

The department has already raised $55 million of the building’s $70 million cost through private donations, the university and a $28.8 million grant from the province.

Hindmarsh said that the department hopes to raise the rest through naming opportunities offered to alumni and corporations.