Hospital officials show off new Pomerado buildings

By: ANDREA MOSS - Staff Writer | Friday, May 18, 2007 1:45 AM PDT ∞

POWAY -- Fourteen months after they broke ground on two new buildings, Pomerado Hospital officials donned hard hats and showed off the nearly finished structures to a small group of media and invited guests Thursday. View A Video

The hospital is one of two operated by the state's largest public hospital district, Palomar Pomerado Health.

On Thursday, district board members Dr. Marcelo Rivera and Gary Powers and Palomar Pomerado Health's lead architect Michael Shanahan beamed as they led a tour of the new, five-story outpatient services pavilion and the four-story parking garage that now stand behind the hospital, at 15615 Pomerado Road.

The men also accepted a giant mock check for $25,963 from San Diego Gas & Electric Co. The figure represented an award the hospital earned from the utility for installing energy-efficient mechanical systems in the central plant.

"Going 'green' is not just a motto with us; it's a motto for all of us to live by," said Rivera, who is both a physician and the board chairman. "We could have taken the shortcuts. But instead of doing that, we decided to do it right."

Shanahan said an environmentally friendly approach is particularly important for hospitals because, as facilities that use a lot of equipment and operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they use high amounts of energy.

Palomar Pomerado spent $28 million to build the new structures and renovate the central plant. Together, the changes represent the first phase of a two-part expansion that, when finished, will double Pomerado's size.

The district is scheduled to begin the project's second phase -- a new, five-story patient wing and second parking garage -- later this year.

Palomar Pomerado worked with developer Pacific Medical to build the outpatient services pavilion and the first parking garage, which has 1,200 vehicle spaces. Contractor Rudolph and Sletten has been overseeing the project.

The pavilion offers 172,000 square feet of interior space. All but 6,000 square feet have already been claimed, Shanahan said.

Centre for Health Care is the building's largest tenant. The medical clinic has a 15-year lease for 70,000 square feet on the pavilion's third and fourth floors and a small part of the fifth.

Last week, the clinic, which includes an urgent care center and a long list of medical specialists, left its longtime home in Rancho Bernardo and relocated to the new building.

Its other floors are waiting for their interiors to be finished. Palomar Pomerado plans to operate a women's health center, a diagnostic imaging center and a medical spa on the pavilion's first floor. The spa will offer massages and other treatments to women waiting for cancer treatments and similar medical treatments, Shanahan said.

The second floor will house an outpatient surgery and endoscopy center with four operating rooms plus anesthesia and post-surgery areas, while the remaining space on the fifth floor will contain offices for doctors affiliated with Palomar Pomerado Health. Hospital spokesman Andy Hoang said Thursday the additional services should be available by the end of the year.

Walking among Centre for Health Care patients visiting the pavilion for the first time, Rivera, Powers and Shanahan stopped several times during their tour to point out energy-conservation features incorporated into the building's design. Large windows on the pavilion's west side, for example, let in plenty of natural light, while energy-efficient lights, recycled carpets, and non-gas-emitting cabinets, wall coverings and other materials were installed inside.

The three also explained how new mechanical systems installed in the plant will both heat and cool the hospital. The plant's renovations alone are expected to save the hospital about $30,300 a year on its energy costs, they said.

Other energy-efficient features, including a solar system that might be installed on top of the parking structure if the district can find the right company to work with on the project, will also help keep the hospital's utility bills down, Shanahan said.

SDG&E's Savings by Design team helped Palomar Pomerado and its architects incorporate as much energy-efficient technology as possible into the buildings' design. Chip Fox, commercial new construction manager for the utility company, said the approach is fairly new but catching on quickly.

"It's amazing," he said. "Now everybody wants to get onboard with it."

Two pedestrian bridges already connect the outpatient services building and the parking structure on their second floors, and Shanahan said another bridge connecting the pavilion to the hospital's main building will be added in the next year or so.

The work at Pomerado Hospital is part of a larger, $1 billion expansion of Palomar Pomerado's facilities in the 800-square-mile area served by the district. Voters showed their support for the project -- including the upcoming construction of a new hospital in Escondido -- in November 2004, when they approved a $496 million bond measure to help pay for the work.

-- Contact staff writer Andrea Moss at (760) 739-6654 or amoss@nctimes.com.

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