$332M Project Adds Landscape Partner

By Natalie Dolce

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Harbor-UCLA Project

TORRANCE, CA-Pierre Sprinkler & Landscape partners up with Hensel Phelps Construction Co. on the emergency room expansion project at Harbor UCLA Medical Center. The $332-million project is slated to be finished by summer 2013.

Groundbreaking for the emergency room renovation began in February of this year. The project will increase the size of the existing emergency room from 25,000 square feet with 42 surgery bays to about 75,000 square feet with 80 surgery bays. It will also add 190,300 square feet of new hospital facilities, including 16 surgery rooms; an adult and pediatric triage; and a new entrance, lobby and waiting area. Other features will include a new heliport and 544-vehicle parking structure.

Pierre crews are planning for multiple move-ons to complete the project. One of which involves converting a grassy knoll into a parking lot as well as removing existing trees for reuse. In order to convert the knoll, Pierre crews will remove the existing irrigation system and cap any valves that remain. For the trees, crews will carefully work around the roots, box, store, and maintain 18 trees until the second phase begins.

Once Hensel Phelps constructs the parking structure, Pierre crews will move on site again to replant the trees among other landscape and install necessary irrigation. Other move-ons entail landscaping over 50,000 square feet of landscape area around the medical center. More than 10,000 shrubs, 190 new trees, and 18,000 square feet of sod will be installed.

For the past 50 years, the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center has served the southwestern community of Los Angeles County. The hospital originally was opened in 1943 by the US Army and became known as Harbor General Hospital when the county took over two years later. The county later formed a partnership with UCLA Medical School, which continues to run a teaching program at the facility.

The hospital is currently one of four level-one trauma centers in LA County. The 72-acre facility is composed of an eight-story, 553-bed hospital, and a 52,000-square-foot Primary Care and Diagnostic Center in addition to a complex of buildings, wooden barracks, and trailers. The on-campus Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, with an annual budget over $50 million, provides extensive laboratory and administrative facilities for faculty investigators.

The project was the first of several health care-related mega projects in the Second District, according to Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. He said during the ground breaking ceremony that the Harbor-UCLA project brings to fruition a conversation that began in 1990 and, together with the new Martin Luther King, Jr., Hospital, will fortify the public health care infrastructure in the Second District.

He added that the project would translate into approximately 8,200 jobs. The project was approved in September 2009 and is being financed through tax-exempt commercial paper and federal stimulus long-term bonds made available under Pres. Obama’s Administration.

Pierre president Joe Lowden tells GlobeSt.com that “Pierre Sprinkler & Landscape is honored to work with Hensel Phelps on the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. They, too, value the client relationship and are consistently ranked among the top general contractors in the country.” He adds that he looks forward to “building personal relationships with their team so that together we exceed the clients’ expectations.”

Categories: West, Development, Medical Office, Los Angeles