View from the top of a nearly constructed tower at the northern end of the other building structures of the Presbyterian Hospital. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal)

The project cost of the Elderly Hospital Tower is about $ 260 million. The tower houses about 144 rooms. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal)

Yearout Mechanical Project Manager Chris Burks (left) and Patrick Aragon discuss the patient tower of a Presbyterian hospital currently under construction. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal)

The patient tower at the Elderly Hospital is scheduled to be completed at the end of the year. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal)

Project manager Sam Burns leads the tour on the rooftop of the Patient Tower at the Presbyterian Hospital. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal)

Intern architect Wesley Townsend (left) and project manager Sam Burns will tour the rooftop of the Presbyterian Hospital’s Patient Tower on May 19. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal)

Billy Reynolds is working on a pipe at the Patient Tower in the Elderly Hospital. Jaynes Corp. is the project general contractor. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis / Journal)

Walking down this 11-story tower from top to bottom means you’ve traveled 7 miles.

However, this tower is still a construction area so far. It smells like a construction site. And the tower has more than 300 workers, with dozens of subcontractors working to complete it by the end of this year.

This tower is the tower of the Downtown Hospital of the Presbyterian Church in 1100 Central SE. In May, large-scale project general contractor Jaynes Corp. and Dekker / Perich / Sabatini architects led a tour that included media, commercial business representatives, and more to showcase the work done. The tour was organized by NAIOP New Mexico, a commercial real estate development organization.

“Basically, it was always planned to be a project for about three years from start to finish,” said Sam Burns, senior director of Janes, who oversees the project.

In fact, a tower over 300,000 square feet will be completed in a three-year timeline, a representative from Janes said. The contractor started working on the project in 2019. When the project is completed, the total space of the hospital will exceed 1 million square feet and the cost of the project will be about $ 260 million to the hospital. According to Burns, the expansion will also include the currently completed three-story multi-storey car park, which will increase space by nearly 30%. This is one of Janes’s biggest projects to date.

The expansion of the Elderly Downtown Hospital was underway to address the aging of health care before the COVID-19 pandemic began, but to address the increasing number of coronavirus cases requiring hospitalization. It’s time to need more beds. ..

Large scope

Early construction included over 100 shutdowns on various types of services on the infrastructure side of the project, including the main sewers of the Presbyterian Church, which had to be replaced with temporary lift stations. ..

“It took us about a year to get everything ready to get started with the basics of the project,” Burns said.

144 rooms (each room is approximately 250 square feet in size) are contained on the 3rd to 8th floors. The tower also has two underfloor levels, some of which include space for a large “gross” lab to microscopically examine pathological specimens taken from patients. The upper floors are currently left as shell space for future expansion.

The tower also has a doctor’s kitchen and garden for hospital employees. There is a “penthouse” on the roof of the tower, which refers to the mechanical system that maintains the flow of the tower. These systems include an air handler unit that supplies air to the tower floor.

“We’re finishing a lot of carbon steel tubing into the coils for water and water supply,” said Chris Burks, project manager for Yearout Mechanical, one of the many subcontractors working on the project.

However, as the pandemic became a reality for contractors, changes were made to the project. These changes include the 7th and 8th floors, which are specifically used as isolation rooms for COVID-19 patients and those who need to contain other illnesses. PPE bottles are located at the entrance to almost every room in the tower.

Patient experience

Wall lights are scattered throughout the tower hall instead of overhead lights, so patients can feel more comfortable without being dazzled by the lights when traveling in bed.

Intern architect Wes Townsend said: With Dekker / Perich / Sabatini who was involved in the project. “Patient experience is very important because the higher it is, the more money the hospital can receive.”

Efficiency measures

The tower has several energy saving attributes. This includes a cogeneration unit that can save hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in some cases more than a million dollars, in hospital annual utility bills, Burns said.

“It’s basically a generator that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” says Burns. “And most of the time it runs out of natural gas …. It’s the first thing we’ve done. We’re actually fixing it to get ready for the installation. We’ll get the final permit. You can set it up, but that’s one of the things (the Presbyterian Church) is trying to do to help with utility bills and some of the renewable energy that can actually be produced. is.”

The hospital design layout was designed to allow nurses and doctors to do it in fewer steps. The nurse station on each patient floor is centrally located and includes equipment and dosing space. It was designed as a “racetrack,” Burns said.

“(They) are trying to reduce the number of steps they have to take during the shift, because when a nurse is exhausted, it can ultimately affect the patient,” Townsend said. Mr. says.

Presbyterian spokesman Melanie Moses said the tower will be operational in the first quarter of 2023.