Construction Start:    November 2004
 
Construction End:      September 2008
 
Cost:                              $40 million

The centerpiece of UC Davis Medical Center’s ongoing construction schedule is the Surgical and Emergency Services Pavilion. When completed, the pavilion will have dramatically altered the landscape at the core of the medical center campus. The hospital will have a new main entrance: The current one on Stockton Boulevard — a fixture for nearly 40 years — will be replaced by a new one facing X Street. A massive section of the main hospital — the six-story north-south wing — will be demolished.

This three-story above, and one story below grade, 470,000-square-foot facility will include:

• a new emergency room
• new operating rooms
• a surgical intensive-care unit
• cardiology services
• a new cafeteria, kitchen and other facilities for Food and Nutrition Services
• pathology laboratory support
• radiology services
• a 12-bed burn unit

The pavilion will meet a combined need to comply with state seismic safety standards and to add more space and beds for programs currently in undersized, inadequate facilities. Senate Bill 1953, passed by the state legislature in 1994, requires all California general acute-care hospitals to meet sweeping new seismic safety standards by 2008. The law gives hospitals three ways to comply with the law: They must retrofit, rebuild or close every noncompliant inpatient building by 2008.

The pavilion will provide replacement space for several services now located in the North-South Wing of the hospital. It also will replace operating rooms in other parts of the hospital. The north-south wing does not meet seismic safety standards, and extensive analysis determined that it would be more economical — and better for patients and staff  — to demolish the wing and build a new facility, rather than retrofit it.

The pavilion will wrap around the eastern and southern sides of the 14-story Davis Tower. To make way for the new structure, a number of buildings — including some of the oldest on the medical center grounds — were demolished.

The first signs of work — the initial preparations for the pavilion — got under way in February 2003 with the beginning of the site utility work. Subsequent steps in preparation for the pavilion was the demolition of seven buildings. A new Dr. Way and the rerouting and installation of the utility infrustructure completed in Fall of 2004.

In November 2004, work commenced on the building itself, starting with removal of some exterior precast concrete panels on Davis Tower, and followed shortly thereafter with major excavation. Foundations and steel erection are underway and will continue through April 2006. The remaining core, shell and tenant improvement will continue through the summer of 2008. New parking areas for staff and construction workers was built on the site of the former Sacramento Skills and Business Center, located on Stockton Boulevard immediately south of Second Avenue.