Industry Pulse (Febuary 2007)

CLEVELAND – Hillcrest Hospital in Cleveland, part of the Cleveland Clinic system, recently announced plans for a five-year, $163 million campus expansion and renovation. The construction project at the 424-bed facility would be the largest investment Cleveland Clinic has made at one of its nine hospitals, part of the Cleveland Clinic Regional Hospitals division. The project would entail adding a new patient tower with 72 new beds, expanding and redesigning the emergency department and Level II trauma center, adding operating rooms and new surgical service areas, developing a Level III neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), making infrastructure improvements, and expanding the parking capacity. The architect on the project is Cleveland-based Westlake Reed Leskosky. 

BOCA RATON, Fla. – In what is believed to be the largest gift ever given to a community hospital in the United States, the Schmidt Family Foundation recently gave $75 million toward the building of a new Boca Raton Community Hospital (BRCH), an academic medical center slated for completion in 2011. The future $640 million hospital, to be called the Charles E. Schmidt Medical Center, named for the late owner of a chain of Florida banks, is planned as a 530-bed facility with all private patient rooms. It is a collaboration of the foundation, BRCH, Florida Atlantic University (FAU), and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. When complete – it is to be built on 38 acres of the Boca Raton campus of FAU – the new center will offer four-year medicine degrees from the Miller School of Medicine. The facility would be the country’s first new academic medical center in the country in about a decade. John Reiling, Ph.D., MHA, MBA, who is considered an expert in hospital safety design, has been hired to oversee the planning, design and construction of the new facility. With the gift from the Schmidt family, BRCH officials say the fundraising effort is about halfway to meeting its $250 million capital fundraising goal.

GIG HARBOR, Wash. – A groundbreaking is slated for this coming spring on only the second new hospital approved by the state of Washington during the past two decades. The future 80-bed, $135 million St. Anthony Hospital, part of Tacoma, Wash.-based Franciscan Health System, is to be built in rapidly growing Gig Harbor, just north and west of Tacoma. In addition to the 217,000 square foot hospital, the project would also have an on-campus medical office building with about 100,000 square feet. The project is scheduled for completion in early 2009. Seattle-based Sellen Construction has been hired as the general contractor; the architect is Portland, Ore.-based Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF) Partnership.

LINCOLNTON, N.C. – Charlotte, N.C.- based Carolinas HealthCare System recently announced that is seeking state Certificate of Need (CON) approval for the development of an $85 million, 101-bed hospital in Lincolnton, about 25 miles west and north of Charlotte. The new hospital would be a replacement facility for a local existing hospital, CMC-Lincoln, which was added to the Carolinas HealthCare system in September. As a result, no new beds would be added to the market. The 38-year-old CMC-Lincoln is the only acute-care hospital in Lincoln County. North Carolina regulators expect to hold a public hearing on the proposal in March, and Carolinas officials hope to break ground in 2008. Completion is scheduled for 2010. Carolinas HealthCare was signed to a long-term management contract of the hospital in 2000 and recently entered an agreement with Lincoln County that committed the system to invest at least $100 million into the hospital.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Statistics show that the future $450 million replacement hospital for the University of Kentucky (UK) Chandler Medical Center in Lexington, which is currently under construction, would reach 100 percent occupancy by 2011. As a result of such strong and growing demand, the UK Board of Trustees recently decided to apply for a CON approval from the state to add an additional 192 beds in two new floors on each of the hospital’s patient towers. According to officials, adding the extra beds would delay completion by just two months. The hospital discharged 2,356 patients in December. The future project is planned to have about 1 million square feet of space and would replace the current hospital in phases. The new replacement hospital is part of an overall $2.5 billion, 20-year plan for the university’s “academic medical campus of the future.”

MODESTO, Calif. – Here’s an item from “news of the weird” in healthcare construction: A new $170 million patient tower addition at Memorial Medical Center in Modesto was nearly complete when someone noticed that about 20 percent of the windows were put in backwards. Hospital officials have acknowledged that the error took place, adding that correcting the problem is not expected to delay the opening of the new wing in April. The two-year construction project will deliver a 112-bed tower with 18 operating rooms and administrative offices, as well as a new parking garage and utility plant. The window error was discovered while a member of the construction team was performing a walk-through and noticed the problem, according to the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), which monitors hospital construction. The agency did not name who was responsible for the error.

SEATTLE – Seattle-based Swedish Medical Center recently began construction on a $130 million, 372,000 square foot orthopedic facility on the city’s First Hill, site of the former Swedish Annex building. Swedish officials say current and predicted demand is the driver for the project, which has a targeted opening date of summer 2008. The seven-floor facility will include 84 new inpatient beds (28 of which would be added in the future), 10 dedicated orthopedic operating rooms, a sterile-processing area, 15 flexible pre-operative/recovery beds, 13 post-anesthesia care beds, an outpatient pharmacy, a pre-admission area, conference rooms and a café. Swedish has three hospitals and 1,245 licensed beds. NBBJ of Seattle is the architect and Seattle-based Sellen Construction is the general contractor.

SUGAR LAND, Texas – St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System recently broke ground on a new 100-bed, 221,000 square foot hospital in Sugar Land, outside of Houston. The future hospital is part of a wave of healthcare construction taking place in the growing area. In addition to the future hospital, the campus would have a 125,000 square foot MOB. Houston-based Medistar Corp. is taking the lead on the development, which is a joint venture of St. Luke’s and a local physicians’ group. PageSoutherlandPage is the architect on the hospital, and Linbeck Construction is the general contractor. The project is scheduled for completion in late 2008. Other projects in the area include the recently completed 85-bed Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital and an under-construction expansion at Methodist Sugar Land Hospital. Methodist’s expansion, which is slated for completion in 2008, would triple the number of beds at the facility. q