Confetti rained down on the nearly 250 people gathered
in The Johns Hopkins Hospital's Houck Courtyard on June 4
as the centerpiece of the largest and most expensive
hospital project in Maryland history was officially
unveiled. The same confetti fell just yards away on the
future site of the two new clinical buildings that those on
hand said will transform
Johns Hopkins
Medicine, and American medicine, far into the
future.
University President William R.
Brody, Johns Hopkins Medicine CEO Edward D. Miller, JHH
President Ronald Peterson and other top administrators were
on hand at the Monday afternoon event to celebrate the
groundbreaking of the Cardiovascular and Critical Care
Tower and the Children's Tower, two buildings that will
form the new face of the hospital. Also on hand at the
event were dozens of invited guests, most notably the first
lady of Maryland, Kendel Ehrlich, and Michael Busch,
speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates, both of whom
gave remarks and helped toss ceremonial ribbons
(representing Hopkins' core values) into the construction
site.
Kendel Ehrlich
Photo by Will Kirk / HIPS
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The state has already pledged $75 million to the
construction of the two towers, estimated to cost $725
million. The trustees of Johns Hopkins Medicine have
approved $418 million in financing — making Johns
Hopkins the single largest investor in the project —
and outside donors to date have pledged $200 million.
The masters of ceremonies for the event were George
Dover, the Given Foundation Professor of Pediatrics and
director of the
Department of
Pediatrics at the School of Medicine, and William A.
Baumgartner, the Vincent L. Gott Professor of
Cardiac
Surgery, cardiac surgeon in charge at the hospital and
vice dean for clinical affairs at Johns Hopkins
Medicine.
Dover said that the current capital project is the
most ambitious undertaking in the hospital's 117-year
history and lays "a new foundation for the future of Johns
Hopkins Medicine."
"When Johns Hopkins was established, it created a new
model that revolutionized the practice of medicine in this
nation," Dover said in his opening remarks. "Johns Hopkins
Medicine is transformational medicine, collaborative
medicine, bench-to-bedside discovery-driven medicine. The
medicine complex that will rise on this spot is designed
from the ground up to help us practice that kind of
medicine better than ever before. What we do in these
facilities in the decades to come will influence how
medicine is practiced in this country and around the world,
just as we did more than a hundred years ago."
Brody said that the two new clinical buildings will be
twin engines of discovery, a hallmark of Johns Hopkins.
William Baumgartner and President
Brody
Photo by Will Kirk / HIPS
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"Here we will always strive to deliver the very best
medical care that can be found anywhere in the world,"
Brody said. "This is our heritage, this is our purpose, and
this is the promise we make today to the citizens of
Maryland and our friends and supporters from all around the
world."
Hopkins officials sought to underline the "ceremony"
aspect of the groundbreaking ceremony as ground had already
been broken on the project, currently in the demolition
phase.
The new clinical towers are part of the comprehensive
10-year master plan that will transform the medical campus.
The estimated $1.2 billion overhaul calls for eventually
razing several campus buildings and adding others, such as
the education building announced last fall. Construction on
that project is expected to get under way in early 2007,
with a completion date scheduled for 2008-2009. It will be
located on a parcel between the Outpatient Center and the
Cooley Center, the current site of three outdoor tennis
courts.
Construction will start on the two new clinical
buildings later this year, following the demolition of the
Jefferson Street Building. The two 12-story buildings,
designed by the Perkins + Will architectural firm, will be
linked to the rest of the hospital and provide roughly 1.4
million square feet of space. The facilities are slated to
open in June 2009.
The two clinical facilities will be built as a single
structure but with a two-tower design that conveys their
individual identities and functions. The buildings will
front the northern side of Orleans Street, adjacent to the
Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building. Together, the two
will frame a new main entrance to the hospital accessible
from Orleans Street.
The 560,000-square-foot Children's Tower, the new home
of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, will contain a
pediatric trauma center, 205 inpatient beds, 10 operating
rooms, outpatient care for oncology and psychiatry, and the
Pediatric Clinical Research Unit, among other services.s It
will house emergency, surgical, interventional, critical
and acute care for infants and children and will integrate
care of high-risk obstetrics patients and newborns.
In this architect's rendering, the
Cardiovascular and Critical Care Tower is at left and the
Children's Tower at right. Forming the new face of The
Johns Hopkins Hospital, they will rise on the north side of
Orleans Street. Completion is planned for 2009.
Photo Courtesy of Perkins +
Will
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The new facility is designed to maintain Johns
Hopkins' current status as the designated pediatric trauma
center for the state of Maryland. In addition, the Harriet
Lane Children's Community Health Building, a new $20
million, four-story, 90,000-square-foot pediatric
outpatient facility situated on the corner of Orleans and
Wolfe streets, will provide one-stop outpatient services
for pediatric patients. A new pedestrian bridge will
connect the existing parking garage to the Children's Tower
and provide an indoor connection to the Harriett Lane
Building.
"We believe our Children's Tower will be the best
children's hospital in America, bar none," Dover said. "And
because it will be so closely linked to the adult tower and
our research facilities, the Children's Tower will be
better — more comprehensive and more innovative
— than any freestanding children's hospital is now,
or ever could be."
The 913,000-square-foot Cardiovascular and Critical
Care Tower will have two floors occupied by the new Johns
Hopkins Heart Institute plus 320 beds, 14 endoscopy and
bronchoscopy rooms and a full complement of radiology
equipment. The facility will be designed to support current
and future technologies and techniques for surgical,
interventional and emergency procedures, as well as
critical and acute patient care.
Patient floors in both clinical buildings will feature
large lobbies and waiting rooms and will have small private
alcoves where medical staff can meet with families.
Decentralized workstations will keep nurses close to their
patients, and all patient rooms will be private, with
high-resolution digital display screens that bring
diagnostic images, lab data and patient records right to
the bedside.
"Advanced technology will permeate the buildings,"
Baumgartner said. "We'll have all-digital medical imaging,
so a cardiologist or a neurologist can walk into any
operating room, any laboratory, any patient's room, touch a
button on a plasma screen and pull up [the patient's]
studies, such as MRIs, angiograms, CT scans or lab
results."
While the day, six years in the making, marked a
significant milestone for the project, Edward Miller said
that the most exciting days are yet to come.
"We've got a long way to go: two 12-story towers to
build and equip, another $100 million in philanthropy to
secure and additional state support to request," Miller
said. "But the hardest steps are behind us. And we look
forward to the day, not so far in the future, when we can
gather again — to celebrate the moment when the work
on these towers ends, and the work in these towers
begins."
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