St. Jude building Memphis research facility, part of $1B hospital expansion

Dive Brief:

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has announced it will build a $412 million research center in downtown Memphis, one of the largest projects in the city's history and part of the hospital's $1 billion expansion plans for its downtown Memphis campus, according to the Commercial Appeal. The new facility will double St. Jude's existing research space and house 1,000 workers.
The new seven-story, 625,000-square-foot research center will include glass-walled laboratory space outfitted with the latest technology, naturally it open areas meant to encourage collaboration, a penthouse and basement. Project designers said some of the bigger expenses were for the special air-handling and sterility equipment needed for the new labs.
Construction will begin this year and is scheduled for completion in 2021. The project is expected to generate 5,000 construction jobs and opportunities for at least 125 vendors.

Dive Insight:

According to Health Facilities Management's 2017 Hospital Construction Survey, children's hospital projects are on the rise, outpaced only by psychiatric hospitals.

Construction of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's (CHOA) new $1.3 billion pediatric campus in the Atlanta suburb of Brookhaven, Georgia is still a few years away, but the system revealed its master plan for the project in November. The new facility will feature two towers and a 446-bed hospital, which will be the center of the new hospital development and will replace an existing downtown Atlanta hospital. The complex will also include administrative offices, 20 acres of green space and the Center for Advanced Pediatrics, construction of which is already in progress.

CHOA officials also said they will pay for the necessary additional infrastructure for the new campus, which will add approximately $40 million to the project price tag.

Boston Children's Hospital is underway with a $1 billion expansion, overcoming the legal hurdles placed in its way. To make way for an 11-story building the hospital said it was necessary to raze the Prouty Garden, which families and patients used regularly. Opponents lost the battle to save the garden in October of last year.

Detractors also raised the possibility that the expansion's expense would result in increased medical costs for Massachusetts patients, but officials said the new facilities would be used primarily by those coming from out-of-state and would not affect costs for local residents.