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San Diego Area High School Adds Healthcare-Focused Building

School News — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 12:38:15 +0000

By Eric Althoff

SANTEE, Calif.—The Grossmont Union High School District has added a new building whose instruction will be devoted specifically to guiding students interested in the healthcare professions. A previous building for adult education on the site was deemed structurally unsound, and thus needed to be replaced due to Southern California’s seismically active environment. The new building fits within the footprint of the previous structure.

The Health Occupations Center Building will feature medical training laboratories that will accurately simulate scenarios students could eventually face in real healthcare settings. The facility will offer courses and certifications such as dental assistant, certified nursing assistant, pharmacy tech, vocational nursing, phlebotomy as well as a more intensive course leading to an EMT certification.

With nearly 20,000 square feet of space, the $6.58 million building will offer classrooms and support spaces in addition to the laboratories. The architectural design also features an exterior breezeway.

The Health Occupations Center Building was designed by architect HED and built by general contractor Conan Construction.

Said Barbara Brock, vocational nurse and instructor at HOC: “The new labs will help us to achieve our mission which is to provide affordable quality education for those interested in employment preparation, skill advancement, and/or personal fulfillment in health-related fields.”

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SDSU Moves Forward with Plans for Mission Valley campus

School News — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 14:56:40 +0000

By Aziza Jackson

SAN DIEGO — San Diego State University (SDSU) has plans for a proposed Mission Valley campus that envisions a vibrant, mixed-use, medium-density development that is transit-oriented — and expands the university’s educational, research, entrepreneurial, and technology transfer programs.

SDSU Mission Valley will provide SDSU with the opportunity to build a world class university research and innovation district just three trolley stops from the main campus. It will allow for SDSU to grow and serve more students, as well as increase its economic impact on the region. SDSU will also build a river park for all San Diegans to enjoy, along with housing, and a new multi-use stadium.

The project would include roughly 1.5 million square feet of campus/tech office space located adjacent to the stadium to activate the space and create an incubator-like feel to the area, as well as to provide modern facilities for SDSU’s internationally recognized researchers, consolidation of offices for faculty and staff, and homes for our interdisciplinary teams researching climate and sustainability, water scarcity and other critical topics. The expansion of community clinics in health and counseling will also provide more opportunities for community engagement.

“The buildings on campus will reflect the fact that it will be a place of collaboration between the academic and private sectors,” said site plan consultant John Kratzer, president and CEO of JMI Realty. “While the plan remains a work-in-progress, we listened to the community and believe that this plan represents a balanced approach to the needs for active and passive recreational spaces as well as biological habitat.”

With the preservation of the River Park and expansion of green spaces planned throughout the Mission Valley site, the university’s site plan mirrors SDSU’s expanding commitment to sustainability, as evidenced by recently constructed LEED silver buildings on the main campus.

“We are committed to LEED silver or better for SDSU Mission Valley,” said Kratzer.

SDSU envisions that just over 4,500 units be built to accommodate students, faculty, staff, as well as the general public. This housing will include townhomes, mid-rise and high-rise residential communities situated along various green belts and pocket parks located throughout the site.

After the siting and design of the plan area’s open and recreational spaces, trails, and River Park, the next priority was to sensitively locate an expandable 35,000-seat multiuse stadium. Located in the upper northwest corner of the site, the stadium would house Aztec football and accommodate professional soccer, as well as a multitude of other sporting and community events.

“These renderings really show how important high-quality open space is to us as a university,” said Robert Schulz, SDSU’s associate vice president of operations and the university’s architect. “I think the campus green space and parks are going to be a great resource to the community.”

SDSU intends to begin construction in 2020 on the San Diego River Park and a multi-use stadium, while preparing the site for further development. The stadium would be planned for completion in 2022, at which time SDSU would demolish the existing stadium and the remainder of the development can begin. The completion of the full project, including the campus research and innovation district, housing, and hotel and retail development, will be done in a phased rollout. SDSU’s current estimate is that it will take approximately 10-15 years for full build-out.

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University of the Pacific Moves Dentistry School to Prime Downtown Location

SAN FRANCISCO — University of the Pacific’s School of Dentistry will move to a seven-story building in downtown San Francisco by 2014. The school has been working on the project for several years — doing preliminary studies, programming and building selection—but just recently hired an architectural firm for the design.

The current campus is also located in San Francisco but the move to a former Wells Fargo office building, at 155 Fifth St. in the city’s South of Market district, will provide the school with a visual presence in the heart of the city.

“The new facility allows Pacific to strategically expand its footprint in San Francisco by providing a highly visible presence downtown,” said Pacific President Pamela Eibeck.

The university purchased the building for $47 million and plans to spend an additional $104 million on renovations for students and future businesses.

According to Eibeck, the school will occupy the top five stories of the building and the bottom two levels will be leased as premium office space.

After an extensive interview process, the San Francisco office of SmithGroupJJR was hired as the design lead in August 2011 to design the 395,000-square-foot school. San Francisco-based Plant Construction Co. is serving as the general contractor and Nova Partners, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., was hired for project management services.

The new school will accommodate 500 students in six programs and have more than 500 faculty and staff. The school will be designed to have a better layout for labs and clinics and will be easier for visitors and students to access via public transportation because of its close proximity to Bay Area Rapid Transportation stations.

“The new campus represents a significant investment in San Francisco, bringing new jobs, new economic activity and one of the top dental schools in the nation to the heart of our city,” said San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee in a statement.

The design team developed the building with the latest architectural innovations in order to cater to the mission and operations of the school.

“The potential is huge for us,” said Nader Nadershahi, executive associate dean for academic affairs in San Francisco. “It’ll give us state-of-the-art technology on site. The school has been recognized nationally as a leader in dental education, and this move allows it to stay in a leadership role.”

The school recently launched a fundraising program to cover $40 million that will be needed to pay for the new building after the previous school in the Pacific Heights neighborhood is sold.

The project is seeking to achieve a U.S. Green Building Council LEED Gold Certification by targeting specific areas in design and construction including sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design.

The new school will house a complex program, with varied space types planned into a very large floor plan that will cause some obstacles for design teams. Wayfinding, circulation and daylighting are all challenges and opportunities to resolve, according to SmithGroupJJR.

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HMC Merges with San Francisco’s Beverly Prior Architects

SAN FRANCISCO — The royal wedding isn’t the only marriage causing a stir.

California-based planning and design firm HMC Architects merged with Beverly Prior Architects of San Francisco.

Beverly Prior Architects will become HMC+Beverly Prior Architects and will continue to serve clients from their current San Francisco office.

Officials from HMC said they had been planning for a San Francisco office for the past few years.

“After getting to know Beverly over the past year and learning she shares a similar vision, culture of collaboration and client-focused service, it became clear this was just a natural fit for everyone,” said HMC’s president and CEO Randy Peterson.

Peterson added that Beverly has built an “exceptional reputation within the architecture profession over the past 25 years.

Officials from the firms predict the merger will enhance both companies’ geographic reach, while strengthening positions in multiple market segments.

In addition to enhancing Beverly Prior Architecture’s education markets with its own portfolio, HMC offers its experience in healthcare, interior architecture and specialty education consulting services.

Meanwhile, Beverly Prior Architects plans to strengthen HMC’s presence in Northern California and their expertise in their justice and civic market sectors firmwide.

Prior said that in the past firms that wanted to enter the San Francisco or California market had regularly contacted her.

“With HMC Architects, the synergies in building our practices together were quite exciting, and I was inspired by their dedication to design excellence,” she said. “Our similarities of client focus, vision, and culture were a great foundation to build on, so this was the right fit at the right time.”

Prior, who founded the firm in 1986, will be principal-in-charge and will serve in a corporate leadership role as the firm’s practice leader for its justice market. Cheryl Lentini, formerly managing director, will become the San Francisco office’s managing principal.

The firm’s work in the education sector includes the ACORN Woodland and Encompass Academy Elementary schools and Chabot Elementary School in Oakland. Currently, the firm is designing two new high schools, a continuation high school and a charter school, on a single site in Richmond, Calif., for Samuel L. Gompers Continuation High School and Leadership Public Schools.

Beverly Prior Architects also designed the Laney College Art Building and the Arts Building Renovation at San Mateo College, as well as the Colusa Outreach Center for the Woodland Community College, Yuba Community College district.

The firm is currently working on a two-story modular classroom design.

Prior said that beyond the traditional architectural design services, the merger can help school districts navigate the “complicated and ever-changing” State School Facilities Program by leveraging expertise in the areas of state and federal funding, facilities master planning, financial planning, site acquisition, budgeting, scheduling, bond planning and election services.

The firm has a team of educational professionals across the state, including at the state capitol, who are up to date on the challenges facing California school districts, such as aging facilities, declining enrollments, development and school site concerns, and community impacts, as well as the effects of all of these influences on the learning environment, Prior said.

“This knowledge allows us to offer design and planning solutions that meet enrollment needs while addressing long-range educational goals for school districts throughout the state,” she said.

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Treatment, Technology a Focus at Mission Bay

SAN FRANCISCO — The financing plans at the new 878,000-square foot University of California — San Francisco Medical Center called for obtaining $700 million in external loans and an additional $600 million from philanthropic donations — unthinkable to some in these tough economic times.

But by 2014, if things continue to go well, the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay will have parlayed a decade or more of vision and planning into a world-class medical facility with the opening of three breakthrough hospitals: Children’s, Women’s Specialty and Cancer. These advanced healing environments will elevate care in the Bay Area by being the only medical facility to integrate teaching, technology and treatment on the same campus.

With an emphasis on comfort and community, UCSF will join entire families in the healing process. By using patient-centric private rooms filled with natural light and bordered by gardens, incorporating the highest standards of energy efficiency, seismic safety, and sustainability, the Mission Bay hospitals will set new benchmarks for 21st-century health care enterprises.

The new facilities will also allow UCSF, which has outgrown its current hospital facilities, room to grow.

UCSF will further encourage the kind of collaboration-translating laboratory discoveries into next-generation therapies that it has in the past, becoming one of the top 10 medical research facilities in the United States, according to hospital officials. Physicians and scientists will have the unique opportunity to partner, creating the best possible solutions in treating cancer medicine and women’s and children’s health. Advanced patient safety protocols, reliable and efficient electronic records, and cutting-edge technologies from robotics to imaging, will further acknowledge UCSF as a model of modern healing.

“[The University of California] and UCSF medical centers are already renowned leaders in translational medicine-applying cutting edge discoveries to clinical care as well as developing innovative partnerships in biomedical, regeneration medicine and related discipline,” says Cindy Lima, executive director of the Mission Bay Hospitals Project at UCSF, who has been involved in the medical center project for the better part of six years.

“But they do not consistently have facilities of the same caliber in which to support their families and staff and to be maximally responsive to changing medical technology,” Lima said. “The construction of the new Children’s, Women’s Specialty and Cancer Hospitals at UCSF Mission Bay will benefit all UCSF programs and campuses as space is developed for expansion and development of new programs across the enterprise.”

According to Lima, the new 878,000 square-foot UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay that is under construction has been granted an opportunity to be built from the ground up based on extensive study of other facilities, and a vision to create uniquely supportive, welcoming, light-and art-filled spaces which includes 60,000 square feet of rooftop gardens.

Other features include ample space for families to stay in patient rooms, innovative and individualized media access in each patient room, noise reduction (rubber flooring, no overhead paging, sound attenuation), comfortable areas to congregate as well as to find respite, such as meditation areas, and areas dedicated and designed for patient education. There will also be extensive child-life areas such as a San Francisco Unified School District schoolroom, located within the hospital, along with music and pet therapy programs.

As of September 2010, the Campaign for UCSF Medical Center had procured commitments of an estimated $375 million, including two substantial gifts of $100 million or more — making it the only capital project in the hospital’s history to receive two nine-figure gifts.

“We’ve got tremendous momentum to support not only this exciting project but the larger vision of UCSF to advance health worldwide,” says Lima. “Thanks to the vision and generosity of Marc and Lynne Benioff, who donated $100 million to the recently named UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.” [Benioff made his fortune as the founder of SalesForce.com].

UCSF recently completed “Challenge for the Children,” an eight-week social media fundraising campaign that in only a few weeks generated $1 million. The successful campaign enlisted prominent team members from Silicon Valley’s high-tech community to spearhead the fundraiser. The campaign also received celebrity support, with Ashton Kutcher and MC Hammer both signed on to lead teams, collectively having nearly eight million Twitter followers.

Monies from the Challenge for the Children fundraiser will be allocated to the new 183-bed Children’s Hospital, which will offer urgent and emergency care, primary care, specialty and outpatient services, and an on-site helipad.

Funding Glitch

Due to the State of California’s fiscal situation, the funding plan at the Mission Bay facility no longer includes state funds. However, UCSF Medical Center plans to pursue seismic-related state funds, if available, to pay back hospital reserves.

Lima said that the university was fortunate enough to reduce project costs by 20 percent, no easy feat for such a large-scale project. The reductions were achieved through a combination of savings due to the recession, innovations and value engineering. The process was possible due to innovations in architectural technology, with the entire 878,000 square-foot project being virtually “built” via 3D Building Information Modeling.

“We were able to reduce the project cost over $200 million from the 2008 budget,” Lima said. “About half the cost was due to the recession and bidding strategies. The other $100 million was achieved through painstaking review of all the building design and elements, and hundreds of creative ideas that our team of architects, CM advisors, the general contractors and our subs collaboratively proposed and evaluated.”

Sustainable Campus

The UCSF Medical Center’s targeted goal is the coveted LEED Gold certification — a lofty goal given that hospitals are some of the most notorious energy users.

However, the new medical center is one of only six medical centers under development in California planning for LEED certification, and when certified will be one of the largest LEED-certified hospital complexes in the world, according to Lima. The LEED certification level of the hospital complex will be determined as plans become solidified and aided by philanthropic donations pledged to the fundraising campaign in support of the medical center project.

“UCSF and a project like the new Children’s, Women’s Specialty and Cancer hospitals at Mission Bay are efforts that everyone really is proud to be connected with,” says Lima. “I’ve been honored to be able to be part of making it happen.”

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