California Construction News staff writer
Construction is moving ahead on a new Kaiser Permanente medical campus in Sacramento that will replace services at the organization’s existing Sacramento hospital and expand healthcare capacity in the Sacramento Valley.
The Kaiser Permanente Railyards Medical Center is being built on an 18-acre site at the edge of The Railyards, a 244-acre mixed-use redevelopment in downtown Sacramento. The medical centre will be anchored by a 662,000-sq. ft. hospital and a 173,000-sq. ft. medical office building.
The project is being delivered on an accelerated schedule, with Kaiser Permanente’s standardized design templates and specifications helping streamline planning and coordination.
SmithGroup, which previously worked with Kaiser Permanente to develop its room standards and templates, is part of a consulting team with extensive experience on the provider’s projects. The project team used those established standards to complete much of the design virtually before adapting the plans to the site’s specific requirements.
The eight-storey hospital will include a 70-bay emergency department, intensive care unit, neonatal intensive care, surgery, maternity, imaging services and pharmacy.
The attached five-storey medical office building will contain 174 offices and 66 exam rooms. The campus will also include a 1,500-stall parking structure and a central utility plant.
The facility will house Kaiser Permanente’s Advanced Neuroscience Center, providing diagnosis and treatment for neurological diseases and complex conditions involving the brain, spine and peripheral nervous system.
The project is also designed to meet California’s changing seismic requirements, with Kaiser Permanente planning to shift services from its legacy Sacramento hospital ahead of new regulations taking effect in 2030.
The medical centre will be one of Kaiser Permanente’s first all-electric hospitals and is projected to be among the first all-electric hospitals in California.
Sustainability and resilience measures will include solar power, battery storage, electric-vehicle charging stations, drought-tolerant landscaping, a vapour mitigation system and low-emitting building materials intended to improve indoor air quality. The project is targeting LEED Platinum certification.
The design is intended to give the medical centre a neighbourhood-scale presence despite its size. Public functions are concentrated along the south side of the complex, activating the street with large windows and pedestrian-oriented architectural elements.
The hospital and medical office building will be connected by a glass rotunda, a feature included in Kaiser Permanente’s design standards. Cast-in-place concrete, metal panels and curved glass curtainwalls will form the exterior.
Outdoor spaces and pedestrian walkways will connect the buildings while providing access to natural light and landscaped areas.
The medical centre is being developed as the centerpiece of The Railyards, one of the largest urban infill projects in the U.S.
The site was historically the western terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s and remained an important centre of railroad operations until they ended in 1999.
The broader Railyards redevelopment is planned to eventually include up to 12,000 residences, along with retail and office space, a music venue and a future major league soccer stadium.
The Kaiser Permanente project is intended to bring a major healthcare facility into the heart of downtown Sacramento for the first time while supporting the area’s broader transformation from a former industrial and railroad site into a mixed-use urban district.
