Construction has begun on the new 74,000-square-foot Heart and Vascular Center at Grossmont Hospital. McCarthy Building Companies is the contractor. Designed by KMD Architects, the Heart and Vascular Center will be a cast-in-place, concrete structure with spread footings and a structural steel frame, with one level below ground and two levels above. Construction of this facility will allow for expansion of the hospital’s existing surgery department and provide new multipurpose procedural rooms with the flexibility to support a wide range of specialties including general surgery, minimally invasive surgery, image-guided surgery and endovascular interventional procedures. When completed in March of 2015, the building also will house a pharmacy, laboratory and covered walkway connection to the existing Women’s Center on Level A, as well as a new loading dock and materials management services area on Level B. The new building will allow for the relocation of the hospital’s pharmacy and clinical laboratory space to meet current seismic criteria.
“The new facility is being built on a tight site within a small footprint of the busy hospital campus, presenting access challenges for work crews, material and equipment,” said McCarthy Project Director Jason Mrozek. “We’ll also be creating tie-ins to the existing hospital, which will call for a carefully coordinated and closely managed construction schedule to minimize any disruption to campus operations.”
Construction cost for the Heart and Vascular Center, budged at $26.3 million, is being financed by taxpayer dollars. In June 2006, East County voters passed Proposition G, a $247-million bond measure sponsored by the Grossmont Healthcare District. As proposed in the hospital’s Facilities Master Site Plan, Prop. G is funding several infrastructure construction improvements at the publicly-owned hospital, which opened in 1955. The bond-financed construction began in 2007, and is scheduled to continue over the next several years. Parsons Corp. is serving as the District’s program manager for the Prop. G-funded construction projects.
