Rendering: Northern Kentucky University / Chase College of Law.
On 11 June 2026, leaders broke ground in Covington, Kentucky, on the Commonwealth Center for Biomedical Excellence, a new building that will become the home of Northern Kentucky University's Salmon P. Chase College of Law, sharing the building with a University of Kentucky College of Medicine campus. For Chase, it is a homecoming: the law school operated in Covington from 1972 to 1981 before moving to NKU's Highland Heights campus. Our congratulations to the school.
What is being built
The roughly 120,000-square-foot building, at 11 East RiverCenter Boulevard, will bring more than 500 Chase graduate students, faculty, and staff back into the heart of Covington, alongside the University of Kentucky's medical students. Construction is expected to be complete by the end of 2028, with classes beginning around January 2029. Placing a law school and a medical school under one roof, in a downtown legal and life-sciences district, is an unusual bet on what proximity between the two professions can produce.
"By bringing together law, medicine, research and innovation in the heart of Covington, we're creating new opportunities," said Cady Short-Thompson, NKU's president. The project has been years in the making, funded in significant part through a Kentucky state appropriation and developed by the Northern Kentucky Port Authority, which has put the total cost at around $125 million.
Why it matters
A building is not just a building for a law school. Where students learn, and who they learn beside, shapes a program's identity. Returning Chase to Covington, and pairing it with a medical campus, gives the college a downtown home among the courts and firms its graduates will practice in, and a neighbour it rarely gets to share a wall with.
For NKU Chase law students
NKU Chase students and alumni have complimentary access to LegalAlphabet, where they can search legal jobs and internships worldwide. Visit the NKU Chase campus page, browse current openings on the United States legal jobs board, or read more from our Law School News desk.
Sources
This report is based on the announcement published by the University of Kentucky, with build specifications and the cost figure from the Northern Kentucky Port Authority.
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