LOS ALAMITOS, CA—Snyder Langston, one of Southern California's largest builders, recently completed construction of a three-story, 70,000-square-foot multi-tenant medical office building and a six-level parking structure within Los Alamitos Medical Center. Located at 3751 Katella Avenue, construction began summer of 2013 with completion late 2014.  All told, the project's total development cost was $37 million.

Snyder Langston worked in conjunction with the project's developer, Pacific Medical Buildings (PMB), on behalf of Los Alamitos Medical Center (LAMC). The medical office building (MOB) was designed by architecture firm, Boulder Associates, a design firm that specializes exclusively in healthcare and senior living design. The 1,077-space parking structure was designed by IDG Parkitects.

Since 1968, LAMC – a general medical and surgical hospital – has provided emergency services, inpatient and outpatient care, and numerous other health services to the Los Alamitos community. Because of its growing base of patients, it was in need of a new MOB to maintain its on-site independent physician base, as well as additional parking to accommodate the growing number of patients to its busy campus.

The MOB was built in the middle of the existing two-acre surface parking lot, which represented 50% of LAMC's parking supply. A six-level, 1,077-space parking structure was also added as part of the development. As both a challenge and solution, PMB began construction of the MOB with only 43% of the property pre-leased. PMB negotiated a physician ownership model and lease terms with the opportunity to invest 100% of the equity in the new building.

“The project was delivered on-budget and on-schedule in 14 months. We ultimately developed a very high-quality, LEED-certified building that will provide a great patient experience,” said Mark Toothacre, president, PMB. “This building will help advance medical care for Los Alamitos and the surrounding communities. In addition, our building has created a very attractive investment opportunity for local physicians, thereby increasing their long-term commitment to providing healthcare for the community.”

Snyder Langston worked closely with PMB to manage the complexities of the extremely busy campus by developing an intricate logistics and phasing plan to keep the campus operating smoothly throughout the construction process.  For example, shuttling and wayfinding programs were implemented since parking lots were located at several satellite locations relatively disconnected from the main medical center.

“The combination of logistics and maintaining harmony with the surrounding residential neighborhoods during construction were among the most challenging elements of the project,” added Peter Jeong, project manager, Snyder Langston.

According to Lee Watkins, vice president of healthcare, Snyder Langston, “The strong partnership formed between PMB, Boulder, and Snyder Langston focused on a vision of solving the challenges faced by many physicians. From the beginning, the partnership and vision of this partnership included an intense focus on producing a building that was optimized not just in terms of energy consumption but also in the workflows associated with delivering high quality patient-centered care while increasing the amount of patients a physician can see each day.  This focus on the built environment combined with the economics highlighted by PMB, makes this MOB attractive to southern California physicians and provides a model for healthcare operations today and into the future.”

Snyder Langston's construction core team consisted of Peter Jeong as project manager, Mark Walk as project superintendent, Lauren Willingham as project engineer, Kay DeGuzman as project engineer.  Steve Gabbert, director of sustainability was also involved in support of maintaining the project's goal of LEED Certification.