Work Begins on New $340M Scripps Facility

LA JOLLA, CA-McCarthy Building Cos. has started preconstruction work on a 382,000-square-foot, $340 million Scripps Cardiovascular Institute in this San Diego County community, where construction is slated to begin in July 2011. The new cardiovascular institute and an adjacent 26,000-square-foot central energy plant that is part of the new project are located on the Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla campus at 9888 Genesee Ave.

McCarthy was engaged by Scripps Health-San Diego as the design assist general contractor for theconstruction project, for which Rich McMahon of Jacobs Engineering is serving as executive construction manager on behalf of Scripps Health. The brick and glass, steel-framed cardiovascular institute will comprise 10 levels, including a basement, intermediate mechanical level and rooftop mechanical level.

The expansion will accommodate 60 beds on two ICU levels, 108 beds on three medical surgery levels, six operating rooms, laboratories, a sterile processing department and an imaging department. Additionally, a tunnel will be built to connect the basement and ground levels to the existing hospital. The new central energy plant will provide the air conditioning, heating, medical gas, steam, fuel and waste storage, plus emergency generators for the hospital.Construction is scheduled to be completed in January of 2015, with tenant move-in in April of that year. The project is being designed by the architectural firm of Hellmuth, Obata+Kassabaum Inc., with KPFF, Inc. as the structural and civil engineer, X-NTH as the mechanical engineer and MWPA as landscape architect.

The new Scripps facility is one of a number of past and current healthcare related projects by McCarthy, which has been ranked among the top five national healthcare builders by Modern Healthcare since the magazine began its annual ranking more than 30 years ago. In Southern California, McCarthy has completed more $2.4 billion in healthcare work and is involved in other new projects that include a recently started $140 million patient tower at Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia.