Against the backdrop of soaring population growth in Southwest Florida, Skanska USA has completed $242m renovation and expansion of the Gulf Coast Medical Center in Fort Myers, adding a new building and nearly doubling the hospital’s bed capacity.
Fort Myers ranked fifth in the US in one 2021 ranking of cities people are moving to, with a net growth of 64.9% over the past year.
The project for healthcare provider Lee Health, conducted in a joint venture with Gates Construction with design by architecture firm HKS, Inc., consisted of a three-floor vertical expansion that added 216 patient rooms on top of an existing tower, and a new three-storey building with 52 intensive care unit rooms, a 16-bay dialysis suite, and three new endoscopy and bronchoscopy procedure rooms.
In all, the expansion boosted bed capacity from 356 to 624. To support the increased bed capacity, expansions and renovations were completed in the clinical laboratory spaces, pharmacy department, food services and the central energy plant. A 1,300-space parking garage was also built to accommodate the hospital’s growth.
Broken down into 43 separate phases, the project doubled the size of the radiology and emergency departments, adding a new MRI, seven ultrasound rooms, 27 regular and airborne isolation exam rooms, four state-of-the-art trauma bays, two X-ray rooms, two CT rooms, and a second helipad.
“As a leader in healthcare construction in Florida, Skanska’s team worked carefully and diligently to build these innovative hospital facilities while the surrounding medical campus remained open to serve patients,” said Michael C. Brown, general manager of Skanska USA’s building operations in Florida, in a press release sent to GCR.
Currently, Skanska has more than a dozen active construction projects across Florida, including the University of Miami’s Frost Institute of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Orlando Health Jewett Orthopedic Institute in downtown Orlando and the University of South Florida’s Research Park Mixed Use Lab & Office project in Tampa.
