Newstrack: University of Iowa Health Care nixes plan to add inpatient tower floors

Background

IOWA CITY — With its 866 inpatient beds near or at capacity most nights and administrators moving ahead with plans to expand both in and outside Iowa City, University of Iowa Health Care two years ago selected planning, design and engineering firms for a project adding two more stories to the eight-level John Pappajohn Pavilion inpatient tower across from Kinnick Stadium.

In August 2022, UIHC issued a request for proposals from prospective construction managers for its “vertical expansion” project — with plans to start work in summer 2023. The total budget was projected at $95 million, with construction accounting for about $50.4 million.

A preliminary summary of the project indicated the university wanted to add two floors — growing the John Pappajohn Pavilion by 38,000 square feet to 10 stories.

The budget included renovating the existing floors seven and eight; adding a level nine for 24 intensive care unit beds; and topping the tower with a 10th level, which would serve as a mechanical penthouse for the floors below, according to the documents that indicated construction would be phased to accommodate ongoing hospital operations.

The seventh- and eighth-floor renovation was to include new delivery and postpartum OB/GYN care spaces — including inpatient beds.

Rock Island, Ill.-based IMEG — an engineering and design company that’s worked on many Iowa projects, including the UI College of Pharmacy Building, UI Athletics indoor practice facility and The Eastern Iowa Airport’s terminal modernization — in 2022 said it would provide mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection and technology engineering design services and medical equipment planning for the expansion.

Des Moines-based RDG Planning & Design was to provide architectural services for the project, which was part of a 10-year plan for UIHC’s main campus that included a new $1 billion medical tower.

What’s happened since

UIHC since has scrapped those inpatient-tower-expansion plans amid significant change — including across its leadership team and its health care facilities footprint.

In August 2023, UIHC welcomed new Vice President for Medical Affairs Denise Jamieson and Bradley Haws, chief executive officer of its clinical operations, a few months later — just before the university bought a bankrupt Mercy Hospital in Iowa City for $28 million.

That purchase gave the university another 234 inpatient beds about 2 miles from its main campus, while it continued building a 469,000-square-foot, $525.6 million hospital in North Liberty. When the new hospital opens next year, it will be capable of providing up to 48 inpatient beds, 16 operating rooms and 14 emergency department rooms.

In trying to meet what UIHC officials two years ago said would be a need for an additional 424 inpatient beds by 2031, the campus is plowing ahead with planning and preparation for an entirely new inpatient tower expected to cost more than $1 billion and encompass 842,000 gross square feet.

For reference, the seven-year-old, 14-story Stead Family Children’s Hospital encompasses 507,000 square feet and is one of Iowa City’s tallest buildings — reaching its maximum-allowed height, given its distance from the Iowa City Airport.

The new inpatient tower is expected to include multiple floors of inpatient units with 48 single-occupancy rooms per floor. And the campus is undertaking several enabling projects to make it happen — including building a new $17.5 million road, new $75 million parking ramp, new $249 million academic health sciences building and new water tower.

Although the university has nixed adding floors to the John Pappajohn Pavilion, it is moving ahead with renovations to the tower — budgeting $74 million for a maternity services expansion on its seventh floor and an associated $41 million expansion of its neonatal intensive care unit in the Children’s Hospital.

“It's too expensive,” Jamieson told The Gazette of the reasons UIHC scratched its original plans to expand up. “And you also have to be careful of the aviation — you can only build up so far.”

Acknowledging the plans were made years before she arrived, Jamieson said, “In modern day construction, I'm told that if you add a level, it's extraordinarily expensive.”

“So almost nobody adds a level,” she said. “That’s why when you build a hospital, you try to have some shelled space that you can later expand into. Because once the building's done, it's very hard to build up.”

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