UCSD Plans for Major Healthcare Projects
SAN DIEGO – A futuristic-looking, 10-story university medical building could graze the La Jolla skyline as early as mid-2016, according to officials of the U.C. San Diego Health System.
The $664 million, 245-bed Jacobs Medical Center, planned for UCSD’s East Campus, will include three new hospitals under one roof — a cancer center, an advanced surgery hospital, and a women and infants care facility. The new medical center is one of several projects the UC San Diego Health System has in the works for the next few years.
Construction on the 490,000-square-foot Jacobs Medical Center is expected to begin in early 2012. Preliminary designs call for 108 medical/surgical beds, 36 ICU beds, 12 new operating rooms, eight labor and delivery rooms, 32 post-partum inpatient rooms, and a three-room birthing center.
Plans also include 52 neonatal ICU bassinettes, three C-section delivery rooms, a fetal diagnostics center, a neuro-imaging center, and a helicopter-landing pad. The facility will be located adjacent to UCSD’s 119-bed Thornton Hospital and the outpatient Moores Cancer Center, the Jacobs Center will benefit from close collaboration with both facilities.
“As a dynamic home for our translational bench-to-bedside research, the Jacobs Medical Center will also serve as an educational space for the next generation of physicians, pharmacists, and scientists,” says Marye Anne Fox, UC San Diego Chancellor.
Of the $664 million need for the project, $131 million has come from donations, $350 million from external financing, and the remainder from state bonds, reserves and capitalized leases. The contractor for the project is Kitchell Corp. and the architect is Cannon Design of Los Angeles.
The new cancer center within the Jacobs Center will meet UCSD’s growing population of cancer patients by adding 72 inpatient beds to the outpatient services already offered by the Moores Cancer Center. Several supportive facilities, including a fitness facility, family consultation room and patient resource area, are all planned for the cancer center.
When complete, the medical centers’ garden-based design and abundant outdoor spaces will offer natural lighting to interior rooms. Dedicated family areas and living-room areas were designed on floors with patient rooms.
Designers are targeting LEED Silver certification by installing and constructing sustainable features such as solar shading, conservative water systems, and recycled building materials.
UCSD Construction Boom
The Jacobs Center is just one of several projects in the pipeline or under construction for the UC San Diego Health System, which serves close to 21,000 inpatients and 540,000 outpatients per year at its two medical centers — the 386-bed UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest and the Thornton Hospital.
“This is an exciting time of growth for UC San Diego Health System,” says Tom Jackiewicz, CEO of the system. “San Diegans will no longer need to leave home to receive specialized care and patients from around the world will choose UC San Diego Health System because of what only we can offer.”
The nearly completed $227 million Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center is 128,000-square-foot facility that will house 50 beds, more than 20 examination rooms, four cardiac catheterization labs, four cardiac-sized operating rooms, and several laboratories. The center, which was designed by RTKL Associates of Los Angeles and is being built by DPR Construction of San Diego, is scheduled to open next spring.
Other preliminary designed projects slated for U.C. San Diego Health System’s East Campus include a $23 million administrative building with faculty offices and clinical trial and support labs and an approximately $15 million parking structure with 1,000-plus patient, visitor, and staff spaces, and a recreational soccer field atop. Both projects are scheduled for completion in 2011. School officials have also begun preliminary planning for a $250 million Clinical and Translational Research Institute on the East Campus, a building slated for completion in 2015.
Construction is also under way on a $65 million Medical Education and Telemedicine Center on UC San Diego Health System’s main campus. The approximately 60,000-square-foot building has been financed through $35 million and is scheduled for completion in May 2011. When complete, the center will act as a training ground in telemedicine and advanced medical and surgical technology for students and regional and state medical professionals.
In March, UC San Diego officials broke ground on the $126 million Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine Facility, where faculty from the school, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the Sanford-Burnham Institute, and The Scripps Research Institute will perform multi-disciplinary stem cell research. The 137,000-square-foot laboratory has been designed to LEED Gold standards. The building, located on a 7.5-acre site in the Torrey Pines Mesa area, was funded with $43 million from California’s stem cell research program, $30 million from philanthropist T. Denny Sanford, as well as money from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and other donors.
The development team includes San Diego-based Lankford and Associates Inc. and Greeley, Colo.-headquartered Hensel Phelps Construction Co. The facility is scheduled to open in September 2011.