The team, led by Clark, includes SmithGroup as lead architect and Ratcliff and Shah Kawasaki Architects as associate architects. The contract involves construction of replacement facilities to be completed in three phases over seven years, making it the largest healthcare investment in the history of Alameda County.
The project’s first phase, to be completed by 2012, includes the construction of a 78,000 square feet medical office building. This three-story facility will be built over a 176-space parking structure and will include connectors to the new hospital.
Phase two is the construction of a nine-story, 169-bed acute care tower. Built above a below-grade central utility plant, the tower will include intensive care, medical/surgical beds, and labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care, and miscellaneous diagnostic, treatment, and support functions. Following the completion of the new acute care tower, Highland Hospital’s existing tower will be demolished and a one-acre interior courtyard, dining terrace, and connecting structures will be built. Phase two is expected to be complete in 2016.
The design-build team will salvage some of the historic materials from the demolished buildings and rebuild them as architectural elements in the construction and the landscape. Phase three, expected to complete in 2017, will re-establish a central outdoor courtyard that was among the original hospital’s distinctive organizing features, but had been lost as additional construction filled the open space.
The Highland Hospital project will be designed to earn a minimum LEED Silver certification. The project’s sustainable components include an innovative thermal storage concept that will lower energy costs by operating chillers at night, which is the lowest demand period for gas and electric utility provider, to cool and store water. Exterior green screens will provide transitions and way-finding for patients and visitors, while cooling and shading the interiors.
