Cook Children’s Medical Center (CCMC) South Tower is a new-construction, 9-story, 318,000 SF hospital expansion featuring new state-of-the-art operating rooms, expanded emergency department, clinical laboratory space, and Heart Center for the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area’s largest pediatric healthcare provider. The project includes 100,000 SF of renovation in the adjoining South Extension, an addition we originally designed and opened in 1998. The South Tower was delivered in a carefully sequenced construction and transition schedule consisting of over 30 phases to facilitate the relocation and expansion of multiple departments and minimize the impact on ongoing operations.
The South Tower represents our 17th major new construction project on the main campus since the Main Hospital opened in 1989. Cook Children’s growth over the last 30 years has been guided by a Master Plan we initially developed in 1985 and have subsequently refined and updated prior to every major expansion project. Cook Children’s visionary leadership and steadfast conviction in a set of primary guiding design principles has helped ensure that the Medical Center campus remains unified and coherent over time.
The South Tower is intentionally designed to continue the aesthetic cohesiveness of the campus, both exterior and interior, while incorporating new materials and advances in construction technology. Custom insulated pre-cast concrete panels were meticulously detailed to achieve the look of natural limestone, cast stone and glazed brick that have historically been used on the preceding buildings and additions. The use of precast panels fit well with the long-established architectural ‘kit of parts’ helped keep construction costs down and saved time in the construction schedule all while still meeting the Medical Center’s exacting standards and high quality.
Cook Children’s “Promise” to improve the health of every child in the region is made manifest in built form not only in the highly-functional clinical spaces but also the family and kid friendly waiting rooms, play areas and outdoor landscaped gardens. A new Meditation Room and Healthy Heart rooftop garden provide areas of reflection and respite for parents and loved ones.
The first floor includes the expanded Emergency Department and extension of “Main Street”, the primary public corridor that connects all of the buildings on campus and is populated with numerous family amenities. The second floor is dedicated to perioperative services containing 16 operating rooms and an intraoperative MRI (iMRI) suite – only the second such surgical suite in pediatric hospitals in the United States and 4th worldwide. The third floor houses the new Heart Center that includes two Cardiovascular Operating Rooms (CVOR), two cardiac Cath Labs and a 14-bed Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU). An Echocardiogram Suite and mechanical support space takes up the majority of the fourth floor. The fifth floor provides shell space for a future medical surgical inpatient bed expansion with the sixth floor finished out as a Behavioral Health Unit. A new Clinical Laboratory and Sterile Processing Department are located in the first lower level with additional mechanical support space on the second lower level and rooftop penthouse.
