Scripps Embarks on $2 Billion Plan
An aerial rendering of Scripps Hospital La Jolla as it will look in 2035.
SAN DIEGO — Scripps Health plans to rebuild Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla for $2 billion over the next 25 years to comply with state seismic regulations and remain competitive in San Diego’s healthcare market.
California seismic laws passed in the 1990s stipulate that by 2013, all hospital structures must be able to withstand a major earthquake, and by 2030 must be able to continue functioning after a major earthquake. The state has threatened to shut down hospitals that fail to meet the 2013 deadline.
Scripps plans on razing Scripps Memorial Hospital and to replace it with three towers, two medical buildings, an outpatient pavilion and a parking garage. The first tower to go up will encompass the Scripps Cardiovascular Institute, which at $389 million will add 168 beds to the hospital’s current 389-bed capacity — 60 of which will be intensive care beds — as well as 108 private patient rooms, six operating rooms, cardiac catheterization labs, cardiovascular research labs and a center for the hospital’s graduate medical school. An adjoining five-story medical office building be built simultaneously and both are scheduled to open their doors in 2015.
Depending on when Scripps secures city and state permits, construction on the institute may not begin until next summer or later.
Scripps Hospital La Jolla as it stands today.
Over the next two years Scripps will announce 25-year plans for replacing buildings at its other four hospital campuses. Scripps La Jolla is the largest of its replacement projects.
The University of California at San Diego also plans to more than double its Thornton campus over the next decade as well, adding the Sulpizo Cardiovascular Center next year and the four-hospital Jacobs Medical Center by 2016 to existing Thornton facilities. New hospitals for cancer, advanced surgery and women and infants at UCSD are also in the works.
Sharp HealthCare, another major hospital system in the San Diego market, is also busy replacing buildings on all five of its campuses.