An eight-story, 2,600-space garage is planned to help alleviate parking concerns around the main JPS Health Network campus as expansion and renovation work moves forward.
To be built next to an intended Ambulatory Surgery Center on the north side of the health network’s main campus, Vice President and Chief Facilities Management Officer Adam Lane said the structure would begin construction in the spring of 2021. It would take about a year to complete.
“We’re expecting the garage at the corner of Magnolia and Main Street to cost about $45 million,” Lane told members of the Tarrant County Hospital District Board of Managers Planning Committee June 3. “We’re going to get the parking issue out of the way permanently.”
Technically, the parking structure is not part of an $800 million bond referendum overwhelmingly passed by Tarrant County voters in November 2018, according to Lane. It is part of a complimentary, $400 million capital improvement program which combine to make up the $1.2 billion modernization and expansion plan currently underway.
Planning Committee Chairman Trent Petty said the bond and non-bond projects are working in harmony, both under the guidance of project manager Broaddus-LeVis.
Parking has historically been an issue spanning the past 80 years as JPS has grown over in the middle of a residential neighborhood south of downtown Fort Worth. Lane said parking for JPS team members, patients and visitors is scattered across several smaller parking garages, flat lots and street parking. By building a large garage, which will complement existing parking structures next to the Patient Care Pavilion and along Allen Avenue, it will allow the two-level Morphy Street parking garage and several flat lots to be eliminated to create space for buildings.
In other business at the Planning Committee meeting:
· Lane announced a $10-million infrastructure improvement project to the central utility plant on the west side of the main campus will soon be completed. It includes replacing an enormous chiller responsible for cooling buildings west of Main Street, upgrading generators to make sure JPS has power in the event of a failure of the city electrical grid and the removal and reinforcement concrete.
“When we’re finished, we’ll have whole house generator power,” Lane said of plans to modernize the plant. “That’s not something that’s ‘normal’ in hospitals. It’s something that is ‘exceptional.’”
JPS President and CEO Robert Earley said the chiller in question, which he described as being as large as a conference room, is incredibly outdated.
“Most of our chillers across the health network date from 1975 until now,” Earley said. “This particular chiller was installed in 1945. That’s why we need to address it.”
Lane said by making improvements to the existing central utility plant, it will be solid for at least a decade, lasting past the point that all planned expansion and improvements to be completed.
· While things like traffic and use studies are still being conducted, Broaddus LEED Green Associate Darrick Walls told the committee current plans call for four medical homes to be built across Tarrant County. He said locations will be based on need and they have not been selected.
Walls said Broaddus is working diligently to make sure new patient care sites are state of the art in form and built of appropriate size to accommodate the health needs of Tarrant County residents for 50 years or more.