Children’s Hospital of Orange County is ramping up work on a $563 million expansion.
The Orange hospital has started on the frame of a 425,524-square-foot patient tower that’s set to see major construction finish later this year.
The project stands to initially add about 90 beds at CHOC for an eventual total of 404 in 640,524 square feet of space.
Early construction on what the hospital calls the South Tower started late last year.
“I’m watching a man walking a plank right in front of my office,” said Dana Bledsoe, the hospital’s vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer.
A 175,000-square-foot medical office building and renovations to existing space also are part of the project.
A fundraising effort to help pay for the expansion is set to start next month. The campaign, along with money from borrowing and operations, is set to pay for the project.
Last year, CHOC sold $265.5 million worth of revenue bonds through the California Health Facilities Fi- nancing Authority.
CHOC also is set to see about $100 million worth of funding under Proposition 3, a 2008 initiative passed by California voters to fund children’s hospitals.
The hospital also has some $30 million in construction money left from Proposition 61, a similar bond initiative passed in 2004.
The South Tower is scheduled to take patients in early 2013. It’s set to open with 88 beds and room to add twice as many.
Plans call for an emergency department, operating rooms, a medical laboratory, pathology department and imaging and radiology services. It will offer more space for several of CHOC’s specialties, such as heart care, cancer, orthopedics and its neuroscience institute, which tackles conditions such as epilepsy.
“Certainly, the building is a physical manifestation of a really unique point in CHOC’s history,” Bledsoe said. “We have been a children’s hospital serving the community. With this tower, we really have the ability to achieve our vision, which is to be recognized as a premier children’s hospital nationally.”
CHOC is one of the county’s largest hospitals by revenue. It was No. 8 on the Business Journal’s February hospital list with yearly net patient revenue of $330 million.
FKP Architects Inc. of Houston designed the South Tower. The Newport Beach office of St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Cos. is the general contractor.
CHOC has gotten a break on material prices since it started work on the South Tower after the economy weakened and prices fell from the peak of the market some three years ago.
“If there is a silver lining for us on the downward economy, you’ve hit it,” Bledsoe said. “Our VP for the project (Waldo Romero) really did a nice job in working with the contractors in getting excellent pricing.”
CHOC, which has 2,272 employees, will be hiring nurses and other workers for the South Tower.
No specific number has been decided upon because hospital officials still are developing a staffing plan.
CHOC is adding beds in phases.
In a filing with the city of Orange’s planning department, the hospital said it would add 60 more beds to the tower in 2015 and 52 in 2020.
Unlike other local hospital expansions in recent years, the South Tower isn’t being built to meet California’s earthquake law, which requires all acute-care hospitals to be able to remain standing after a major quake.
CHOC officials have said their main building, which went up in 1991, meets seismic requirements.
Orange city officials have supported CHOC’s expansion, including Mayor Carolyn Cavecche, who has said the project fits into her vision of Orange being the county’s “medical hub.”
UCI Medical Center opened the first phase of its new $556 million hospital in Orange in 2009. St. Joseph Hospital-Orange opened a patient tower in 2007.
Orange also is home to Chapman Medical Center.
CHOC’s expansion isn’t the only OC hospital facility that’s scheduled to open in 2013. Kaiser Permanente is working on a $560 million, 262-bed hospital with 10 operating rooms in Anaheim that will replace its aging facility on Lakeview Avenue that’s been around since the mid-1970s.
