Historical Collaboration

A major historical renovation is taking place in the heart of Phoenix. Three historic buildings erected in 1911 and formerly used as the Phoenix Union High School campus are being renovated for higher education use as a training facility for medical students. The University of Arizona College of Medicine, in collaboration with Arizona State University (ASU) will utilize the buildings to expand the Phoenix program of the medical school. The campus will initially accept 24 students per year, but the class size is expected to expand to 150 students in the next 10 years. Currently under construction, each of the three buildings, totaling 89,000 sq. ft., will retain historic elements, while housing new cutting-edge additions. With a scheduled completion of this summer, the project is being built with the goal of transforming the campus into a quality place for the next generation of physicians.

Eye on Private Health

“The healthcare industry in California is surging”, said Dave Valentine of DPR at the North Bay Business Journal’s 2006 Construction Update in late April. While much of the North Bay buzz over the subject is due, in most part, to the need for California’s acute-care facilities to be seismically sound by 2008 (or 2013 with extension), the national healthcare construction industry is showing similar growth for different reasons. According to FMI Corporation, last year hospital construction was valued at $34 billion and that number is projected to be around $46 billion in 2009. Valentine spoke to the challenges that are impacting current construction, including overextended construction workforce and natural resources. But also factoring into the equation are new guidelines, set forth by the Facilities Guidelines Institute and the American Institute of Architects’ Academy of Architecture for Health, calling for new construction to provide all single occupant hospital rooms. While having a private room may seem like a luxury, studies show that patients in private rooms recover faster by not only protecting patients from their roommates’ ailments but also allowing them privacy and helping their state-of-mind to recuperate. Private rooms are also proving cost efficient; logistically, patients can be transferred through the system without concern for putting patients of the opposite sex or patients that may make one another sick into the same room.

Lasting Relationships

Building upon a 10 year relationship, DPR has been awarded three new medical office building (MOB) projects for Kaiser Permanente in California. The first two buildings, currently in preconstruction, are both located on Kaiser Permanente’s existing Redwood City campus, adjacent to DPR’s office on Veterans Boulevard. The first MOB, a fivestory, 112,000-sq.-ft. structure, is scheduled to break ground in April 2008. Construction of the second MOB is expected to begin in September 2009, after completion of the first. In addition to the two projects in Northern California, DPR and Kaiser Permanente are working together in the preconstruction phase of an MOB in Southern California that is more than 66,000-sq.-ft. The project, slated to break ground this October, encompasses construction of a ground-up facility on Kaiser Permanente’s existing campus in Corona, CA, as well as a 25,000-sq.-ft. remodel of a structure for preventative medicine that will be open to the public in spring 2008.