Dive Brief:
- Turner Construction and Pike Construction Services broke ground on a $650 million hospital expansion project in Rochester, New York, according to a Sept. 12 news release.
- The renovations and additions at the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Strong Memorial Hospital will more than triple the size of the facility’s emergency department while adding 650,000 square feet of space and a new, nine-story patient tower.
- The build represents the largest capital project in the university’s history and received a boost from New York’s Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program, which contributed a $50 million grant. Another $1 million came from federal funding.
Dive Insight:
The project’s groundbreaking follows demolition work by Turner and Pike in March that removed 300 tons of material from a set of brick structures that stood just to the west of the current emergency department building.
The ER expansion and new tower will help address chronic bed shortages and emergency department overcrowding issues that the community has faced for years, which were further exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the university.
The project will add more than 200 examination, treatment and patient observation stations in phases to the emergency department and the hospital’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program. In total, it will expand the footprint in those areas from 32,000 to 120,000 square feet.
The nine-story inpatient bed tower will include more than 100 private inpatient rooms, as well as additional floors for future operating rooms and treatment services for the emergency department.
New York City-based Turner recently completed another healthcare project, a 12,000-square-foot renovation of the behavioral health unit at the MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton. Pike Construction Services has a long history in the Western New York region since its founding in Rochester in 1873.
The expansion is slated for completion in 2027.