The Project of a Century

St. Mary’s Hospital expansion & addition creates mega-facility to serve broad regional needs

Grand Junction’s main hospital is getting a $276-million expansion and renovation to make it the largest healthcare facility in western Colorado and eastern Utah.

By Dan DeCristoforo

When the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kan., founded their not-for-profit hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., in 1896, they probably never envisioned it would one day become the largest medical facility between Denver and Salt Lake City.

And the job isn’t finished yet. The current Century Project at St. Mary’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, located near the Grand Junction airport, is intended to provide the latest medical care and technology to the residents of the Western Slope of Colorado and eastern Utah.

Planned in 2004 and approved in 2005, the Century Project nearly doubles the size of the present facility, adding a 434,000-sq-ft patient tower and remodeling 75,000 sq ft of existing space.

“Major goals are improved patient care in a family-centered healing environment with private rooms and reduced risk of infections; new space for current and emerging technologies, and the ability to meet the health-care needs of a growing population for the next decade and beyond,” says Bob Ladenburger, St. Mary’s president and CEO.

Fast-Track & LEED The 240-ft-tall, 12-story patient tower, due to finish Nov. 30 and be fully operational in January, is the tallest building in the Grand Valley. Groundbreaking took place in July 2007.

advertisement

Set to begin later this year, the remodel is due to complete Jan. 31, 2011.

“Of the $276.2-million total project cost, $196 million went toward construction and $80 million for soft costs: medical equipment, furnishings, IT, consulting services, fees and permits,” says owner’s representative Rod Jenkins.

Fast-track scheduling enabled the team to stay on schedule and on budget despite a 7% jump in construction costs during 2005. Mild winter weather and a reliable, safety-conscious crew also helped.

“Designers were producing construction documents for interior finish while we were placing foundations and erecting steel,” Jenkins says. “Manpower was another issue, but we contracted early with our subs to ensure meeting our requirements.

“We have applied for LEED Silver certification and are progressing well with our design, construction and operational credits. LEED certification would represent a significant accomplishment for an addition to an existing hospital built on a tight site such as this one,” he says.

Quake Proof Grand Junction-based FCI Constructors Inc. is acting as the general contractor for the project in a joint venture with McCarthy Building Cos. Inc., San Diego.

The 240-ft-tall, 12-story patient tower addition to St. Mary’s Hospital is the tallest building in the Grand Valley and creates the largest medical facility between Denver and Salt Lake City. (Photo by Christopher Tomlinson, Daily Sentinel)

Ron Vargo, senior project manager with McCarthy, says: “The Sisters of Charity added money to the project to pay for the LEED requirements. Additional dumpsters and laborers were brought in to sort waste materials. Recycling the mass quantities of drywall involved trucking it over the mountains to a processing plant in Loveland. Aluminum curtain wall containing the requisite amounts of recycled material was purchased at a premium.”

Compliance with Grand Valley’s Seismic Zone C required the addition of substantial amounts of wind bracing and extra steel reinforcement for MEP systems in the ceilings and elsewhere. For example, chilled-water pipes are tied to the decking with aircraft cable that can withstand the specified levels of seismic movement. Heavily perforated interior walls required reinforcement.

“With the construction site located directly between the parking garage and the existing hospital, a 300-ft, reinforced ‘tunnel’ was built across the former main lobby and patient administration area,” Vargo says. “The interior looks like regular hospital space with finished walls, automatic doors, heating and cooling, but outside, work went on all around it.”

The patient tower houses the main entrance, registration, emergency rooms, surgery, obstetrics, orthopedics, and the kitchen and dining area. Included are a post-anesthesia care unit, neonatal intensive care and an ICU. (Photo courtesy of Perkins+Will)

Room to Grow The patient tower will house registration, the main entrance, emergency rooms, surgery, obstetrics, orthopedics, kitchen and dining area. Included are a post-anesthesia care unit, neonatal intensive care and ICU. Floors nine through 12 will be shelled and reserved for future expansion. At completion, there will be 300 private rooms equipped with accommodations for family members.

Remodeled floors one through three in the original building will provide space for volunteers, laboratories, sterilizers, another ICU, materials management and environmental services.

The central utilities plant was upgraded to accommodate the current and future additions.

The new 12,500-sq-ft education center, an extension of the fifth floor built over the roof of the existing hospital, contains four large classrooms fitted with an AV system tied to the campus-wide system and community hospitals throughout western Colorado. The majority of the hospital’s mechanical systems are also housed on the fifth floor inside the patient tower.

The building’s design utilizes three materials sourced in part for LEED consideration: red brick to match the original structure, metal and glass. (Photo courtesy of Perkins + Will)

Care Flight, a Bell 412 helicopter, crew, medical personnel and maintenance staff, is housed on the roof and the top four floors of the 16-story main-elevator shaft. The full-service heliport includes a helipad, hangar, maintenance facility, office space, four bedrooms, full bath, meeting room and storage. “Our entire Care Flight team can live up there and be ready to go on a moment’s notice,” Jenkins says. Care Flight also operates a fixed-wing aircraft.

Floors one through five are brick clad and have a 60,000-sq-ft footprint while the upper seven floors feature a 31,000-sq-ft footprint and full-height aluminum curtain walls with strip windows to provide maximum amounts of natural light into patient rooms.

Thick alluvial fill across the site called for deep foundations with 283 concrete-and-steel caissons ranging from 36 in. to 48 in. in diameter and averaging 90 ft to bedrock. In all, the project consumed 21,000 yd of concrete. Floors are concrete slab on metal decking.

The Century project nearly doubles the size of the present facility, adding a 434,000-sq-ft patient tower and remodeling 75,000 sq ft of existing space. The new hospital will have 300 private rooms equipped with accommodations for family members. (Rendering courtesy of Perkins + Will)

Five poured-in-place concrete cores support the tower’s steel frame, which topped out in October. Three cores make up the prominent brick-and-glass main shaft on the tower’s south side while stairwell cores support the building’s east and west ends. The east core also carries the MEP systems. The main shaft houses two “megavators,” high-capacity elevators to transport trauma patients from the heliport; three passenger elevators; and two service elevators.

“The building needed to say ‘21st Century’ and ‘technology’ without looking opulent or flashy,” says Chuck Knight, lead designer with Perkins + Will, a global design firm with several U.S. offices. “We held it to three materials, locally sourced for LEED’s considerations: red brick to match the original buildings, metal and glass. Extensive glazing with views of the Grand Valley and mountains give patients the benefit of the proven healing power of nature and light.”

An iconic canopy above the third-floor healing garden projects toward the front entry. Located off the critical-care waiting area and oriented toward the morning light, the garden extends the hospital’s healing ambiance into the outdoors.

Project Team

Century Project, St. Mary’s Hospital Grand Junction, Colo.
Owner: Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth
Architect: Perkins + Will
Contractor: FCI/McCarthy JV
Major Subcontractors: Crabb Mechanical, Falcon Plumbing, Zimmerman Metals, Monument Erectors