The Pine Creek Medical Center is set to go vertical in the coming weeks on 4.9 acres at the hard corner of Harry Hines Boulevard and Research Row. The medical partnership, led by Dr. Cora Ramirez, has been working the plan for nearly two years.

The physician-run hospital at 9032 Harry Hines Blvd. is designed as "a one-stop shop" in an alternative setting that includes a lodge-style lobby with a fireplace and a lifestyle bistro for patients and families alongside six operating rooms, a 3,000-sf imaging center, physical therapy space and medical practices from A to Z. Ramirez tells GlobeSt.com that the short-stay hospital's hard and soft costs total $10 million, with another $7 million earmarked for equipment, while the three-story office building's price is pegged at $5.5 million.

Ramirez, steering her third medical partnership, says the long-range plan calls for relocating the Medical Arts Surgery Center of Dallas to the Pine Creek Medical Center by 2007 to coincide with the lease expiration at the former Columbia HCA-run facility, positioned less than two miles from the soon-to-rise medical complex. Pine Creek will come out of the ground as a 47,000-sf, 18-bed facility on one floor. A 20,000-sf second floor with another 18 beds and four more operating rooms will be added in 2006 so it's ready in time for the relocation.

"We are doing this hospital because there was such a great response to the Medical Arts Surgery Center. We outgrew the place in a year's time," she says of a facility that opened doors in 2000. To help ensure that doesn't happen with Pine Creek, she confides that talks have begun to buy an extra piece of abutting land.

Ramirez, who also steered the Plano Surgery Center development, is talking to doctors about a similar initiative for South Dallas plus she's aired the prototype to physicians in New Orleans. She's not sure how many other medical complexes will be built, but she is certain more will follow.

Azimuth: Architecture Inc. of Dallas designed the complex and will steer development through occupancy permitting. Ramirez, tasked with securing clinical certification, says the keys should turn in February 2005 to allow doors to open two months later. Dallas-based Rogers-O'Brien Construction Co. is the general contractor. Trophy Healthcare Investments Inc. of Dallas is pre-leasing the medical office building.