Fifteen years after the University hospital first moved into its towering eight-story home just south of the Rotunda, the portion of Grounds known as the health systems precinct is once again slated for drastic change.
The University's Main Hospital, built at a cost of approximately $230 million in the late 80's, is now undergoing an $87 million expansion and renovation, and more projects are on the way.
In a largely procedural move last Friday, the Building and Grounds Committee of the Board of Visitors approved a revision in the University's master plan to accommodate nearly $150 million in additional construction over the next decade.
"What we're trying to do is look at the footprint and have it make sense to those who use it," Board Member Mark J. Kington said.
Fitting the pieces together
From its humble beginnings as an Infirmary in the 19th century, the University hospital and its associated schools have expanded as a massive hodgepodge of structures, located a mere stone's throw from the Lawn.
As part of the University's current expansion plans, University Architect David J. Neuman said measures are being taken to improve the visual identity of the health system areas, including the Hospital and the Medical and Nursing Schools.
"From a landscape perspective, there is a lot we can do to create a more consistent identity," Neuman said.
In looking to the past, Neuman attributed the hospital precinct's current lack of identity to both the incremental nature of prior expansion efforts and the previous absence of an overall design plan, such as the one recently approved by the Buildings and Grounds Committee.
"If we do this right, there should be a real impact in four to five years."
During this period, Newman said he hopes to implement consistent landscaping and signage schemes that will coincide with new construction.
Other efforts could ease the arrival experience for patients and visitors. Reconfiguring traffic patterns along Hospital Drive, for example, could eliminate current hassles such as one-way parking and restricted access, Neuman said.
"We've got to straighten it out," he said. "It's really confusing."
For those traveling by foot or hitching a ride, a future entrance plaza near the intersection of Jefferson Park Avenue and Lee Street would provide a central entry point to the main hospital complex. Across the street, a proposed cancer center on the current site of a hospital parking garage could be designed similarly to accommodate an entrance circle.
In the meantime, the complexity of current pedestrian pathways along with the general inaccessibility of building entrances serve to discourage nearby visitors from traveling by foot, Neuman said.
"Some places along the street you have trees, in other places you don't have a sidewalk," he said. "We need to make it more hospitable to walk over from central Grounds, Main Street, and eventually, the South Lawn."
The ultimate goal, Neuman said, is to better connect the health systems precinct with the rest of Grounds.
"The temptation is always to drive there, even if it's only three blocks away," he said. "I think that's kind of silly."
Beyond buildings
With $350 million in construction, expansion, renovation and acquisition on the way, the health system is looking to better utilize its facility resources by consolidating similar medical functions within close proximity of each other and encouraging new cooperative frameworks between different areas of the system.
The nursing school, for example, is not only looking to gain much-needed classroom and research space with its planned $12 million expansion, but it is also hoping to use its construction opportunity to create new linkages with the nearby Medical School, Nursing School Dean Jeanette Lancaster said.
With physical expansion having brought the Medical School nearly to the doorstep of the Nursing School's home at McLeod Hall, Lancaster said intraprofessional programs have sprung up between the two schools.
Current cooperative programs such as clinical skills courses for medical students and clinical connections seminars for students from both schools offer an opportunity for future health care professionals to get a head start on working together outside of a hospital setting, Lancaster said.
Beyond mere convenience, Lancaster said the future addition of connected physical passageways between the schools could foster more of these innovative programs.
"In time we will look much closer into how we can work together," she said.
With the school already having raised $10 million of its $12 million projected expansion cost, Lancaster said she hopes to have architect hired by the end of January and potentially have a new building completed by the 2007-08 school year, though further fundraising will be necessary to support simultaneous renovations to McLeod Hall.
Making way
With dozens of buildings already crowding between Jefferson Park Avenue and the railroad tracks, the University is looking toward redevelopment of current building sites for future expansion.
For many existing structures, however, redevelopment may be a euphemism for demolition.
Sitting in a prime location near JPA and the hospital entrance, for example, the quarter-century old Hospital Parking Garage West will soon make way for a $70 million clinical cancer center.
"That parking garage was nearing the end of its useful life," Kington said. "It wasn't necessarily as well-designed as it could have been."
Still, because the site is already graded and equipped with basic utilities, it could be cheaper to build a new structure there once the parking garage is demolished.
Nearby, a planned children's medical center will be located on the current site of the 35 year-old Blake Center, which currently houses the offices for the University's Faculty and Employee Assistance Program and the University's Patent Foundation.
With these and future redevelopment efforts, the University is looking to help link its past to the future, Kington said.
Along with the construction of a core laboratory facility at the intersection of JPA and Main Street, Kington said plans are being made to renovate a nearby property currently occupied by SunTrust Bank.
"That's a great opportunity to restore and preserve a historic building," he said.
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