When Brown University opened its new $45 million medical school in August about a mile from its campus here, it was the institution's first academic department to be located away from its home on College Hill overlooking downtown Providence.

Brown's reasons were twofold: there was little room on its campus for a building large enough for an Ivy League medical school, and it would bolster a 360-acre so-called Knowledge District that would draw high-tech, high-wage jobs to Rhode Island, which was among the hardest-hit states in the recession.