Hospital Launches $120M Expansion

CAMDEN, NJ-Cooper University Hospital is set to launch a $120-million expansion and renovation project, with everything to be completed by 2009. Hospital officials have also tapped the Philadelphia office of Turner Construction to complete the massive overhaul, which a hospital spokesman terms "the most dramatic physical expansion of the hospital in almost 30 years."

Centerpiece of the project is construction of a new 10-story, 316,000-sf tower that will comprise a new patient care pavilion. When the expansion was first announced two years ago, the tower was to have been six stories and just over 200,000 sf, but "patient care demands required a larger facility," according to the spokesman. The phase also includes a 9,000-sf addition to the facility's Keleman Building, and the two expansions are slated for completion in mid-2008.

Once the tower is completed and occupied, phase two of the project will launch with a major overhaul of the existing 58,000-sf Keleman Building, slated for completion in 2009, according to hospital officials. The renovations will include a new emergency department, new intensive care unit and operating room support facilities.

Official launch of the expansion/renovation is part of a larger effort that the hospital spokesman terms, "building a 21st century hospital." Part of the larger effort is a new academic building: Earlier this year, hospital officials announced plans for a new $130-million academic and research building at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The project also calls for a proposed stem cell institute, auditorium and public meeting center, clinical research and office buildings.