Presbyterian Hospital of Denton

The hospital expansion project represents the largest private capital investment in Denton's history.

by Natalie Keith

A $100 million hospital extension project is adding a five-story, 300,000-sq.-ft. addition to Denton Community Hospital.

"It is going to be great to have this facility as part of our community," said Jeff Reecer, the hospital's chief operating officer, who is overseeing the project. "We'll be able to provide services for people in their hometown of Denton rather than their having to drive to Dallas."

Located on 35 acres adjacent to the existing facility, the extension will be known as the Presbyterian Hospital of Denton and will be connected to Denton Community Hospital by a 260-ft., second-floor connector. The hospital's service area includes more than 250,000 people living in Denton, Little Elm, Gainesville and southern Oklahoma.

Bovis Lend Lease USA, based in Nashville, is the general contractor for the project, which involves the construction of two medical office buildings. The first is a four-story, 80,000-sq.-ft. building that will open next month. The hospital campus will include five additional sites for future, independent medical office developments.

The project is a partnership between Triad Hospitals Inc. of Plano and Texas Health Resources of Arlington. Under the agreement, Triad will have 80 percent ownership of the hospital. It is the largest private capital investment in Denton's history.

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The extension will add 162 beds to the facility, 142 private rooms and 20 beds in the intensive and critical care units. It will also feature a 27-bed emergency department, with dedicated areas for heart care, obstetrics and gynecology, trauma, special procedures, general examination and observation. When the project is finished, there will be a total of 300 beds on the combined campus.

Anticipating future developments, the new facility will have a shelled fifth floor to provide for a shorter construction time if bed capacity has to be expanded.

The extension will feature nine operating rooms, two cardiac catheterization laboratories, a magnetic resonance imager, two CT scanners, procedure rooms, an ultrasound room, two endoscopy suites, 11 labor/delivery/recovery suites and meeting rooms.

It will provide expanded Women's Center services for labor, delivery, diagnostics and treatment along with support and business office functions. There will also be education and community meeting spaces.

Ascension Group Architects LLP of Arlington is the project's architect. The company is also providing site analysis and acquisition assistance, feasibility analysis for several project-type development approaches, space programming, interior design, health planning design and other services.

Rod Booze, managing principal of Ascension, said the building will have an Arriscraft calcium silicate stone veneer, a curtain wall with low-e reflective glazing and a rubber EPDM ballasted and fully adhered roof.

The hospital campus was designed around an "airport" concept with a central circulation feature. All outpatient services are distributed as hubs off the central spine, Booze said.

"The net result facilitates outpatient services closer to a point of service and a point of access," he added.

The hospital is designed circulation-wise outside to inside and inside out relative to intradepartmental relationships. Circulation is differentiated between patrons, outpatients, in-patients and caregivers. Vertical circulation is decentralized and distributed consistent with inpatient access to primary hospital components, Booze said.

The existing facility remained open during construction, but this did not seem to pose a problem for the construction team. Although a connector adjoins them, the two facilities operate separately, Reecer said.

"There was practically no interruption," he added. "The extension really is a whole new facility."

He said the hospital plans to renovate the existing facility once the extension is completed.

The building has a concrete foundation and is constructed with structural steel and an exterior installation and finish system. The EIFS provides superior energy efficiency and offers greater design flexibility than other cladding products, said Dean Halijan, project manager with Bovis Lend Lease.

The building has a glass curtain wall with a translucent canopy and three pyramid skylines, Halijan said.

The fast-track project was completed in 18 months (including design and construction). One way Bovis got a handle on the tight timetable was by hiring the right subcontractors with early release packages for civil site, foundation, steel and MPE infrastructure work. Work was conducted six days a week for eight to 10 hours a day. When the building was topped out, there were 650 workers onsite, Halijan said.

"We arranged for an early buyout of all the trades," he added. "They bought into the schedule right away."

Duke Rose, a project executive with Bovis, said one of the unique aspects of this project was the early involvement of the owner and architect. He said there were six to 10 meetings before construction began where the project team talked through ideas and came to an agreement as to how the owner's needs would be met.

"There was a full six to eight months of preparing before work began, and that helps a lot," Rose said. "I think the owner gets a better project at the end of the day."