Just about doubling its size and capacity, the new 380,000-square-foot Tom and Billie Long Patient Care Tower at the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, is very much reinforcing the hospital’s role as an important community anchor in Contra Costa County.
Visually centered by a beautifully designed atrium and three-story rotunda garden, the $600 million expansion project includes 242 patient beds, a 24,000-square-foot emergency department, a rooftop helistop, a neonatal intensive care unit, three surgical suites, a new 20,000-square-foot central utility plant, and a 780-space parking structure.
Although the tower only opened its doors in April 2011, the community response has already been quite enthusiastic, perhaps somewhat attributed to the extensive community outreach that went into the nine-year planning, design, and construction effort.
In fact, when John Muir Health hosted a health fair and community open house to present the new tower to the public in early April, more than 2,000 people queued up and were willing to wait approximately 40 minutes to tour the building, while 4,000 additional community members turned out for the health fair.
“Over time, we held literally hundreds of user meetings with the hospital administration, medical staff, and volunteers,” relates Tom Patterson, AIA, principal, Ratcliff, Emeryville, California, whose firm master-planned and designed the entire expansion. “Ultimately, little changed about the project through the construction, despite changes in hospital leadership, which is really a testimony to the excellent, collaborative planning that went into this whole complex.”
While the expanded state-of-the-art medical care and healing space is the essential foundation of the project, it’s the lobby and rooftop gardens that seem to be turning heads.
Upon entering the spacious, light-filled lobby, visitors are drawn to the central core where a 52-diameter glazed rotunda encircles an elaborate garden with bamboo and a water feature.
