New facility provides care closer to home for cancer patients

Metal panels on the exterior ripple in color and glassy stair towers act as light houses identifying the cancer center.

Photo courtesy of CallisonRTKL

The recently opened $21 million, 35,000-square-foot Karmanos Cancer Institute is a major part of an ongoing transformation underway at the McLaren Port Huron (Mich.) campus.  

The cancer institute provides comprehensive oncology services, integrating chemotherapy and radiation therapy into one facility. The project was jointly designed by CallisonRTKL and SmithGroupJJR, which worked closely and collaboratively on the design of the new cancer center, carefully considering schedule, materials and conceptual intentions.

“A process improvement approach was interwoven into the design process, ensuring that form follows function,” says Steve Stokes, senior associate vice president, CallisonRTKL. “The outcome has been a holistic result true to the physical and cultural needs of McLaren Health.”

The team drew inspiration from the surrounding environment for the facility’s design, says Bob Varga, AIA, specialty design leader, SmithGroupJJR.

“On the building exterior, metal panels ‘ripple’ in color, just as the nearby river does, while the glassy stair towers act as lighthouses identifying the cancer center,” Varga says. “The interior continues the same thought with materials in blues and warm natural hues.”

The new cancer institute enables patients to receive care closer to home, eliminating the need to travel out of the area for treatments and therapies that usually require several visits per week, says Jennifer Montgomery, R.N., president and CEO, McLaren Port Huron.

The center features a linear accelerator, a state-of-the-art device that delivers external-beam radiation precisely to a tumor while minimizing damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. Twelve chemotherapy infusion bays on the second floor offer patients privacy, views overlooking nature, heated massage lounge chairs and televisions for long treatment sessions.

Physician consult space enables treatment planning, examination and follow-up care. In addition, multidisciplinary teams focused on 13 specific types of care, access to genetic counseling and testing, and patient navigation services, including the coordination of support care, all offered within the Karmanos Cancer Institute.    

Serving as the construction management team for the new facility was the joint venture of Barton Malow, Southfield, Mich., and Christman Co., Lansing, Mich.

The SmithGroupJJR and CallisonRTKL team continues to provide master planning, programming and conceptual design services for the McLaren Port Huron campus. The new cancer center is part of other projects underway at the campus, including construction of a new 165,000-square-foot, multistory patient tower, as well as renovations to the current hospital.

The new patient tower will feature 90 private rooms, an emergency center, observation unit, a new and expanded intensive care unit, and an inpatient surgery/interventional suite. Occupancy is anticipated in spring 2018.

Renovations to the current hospital include a new front entry and central lobby, renovated private patient rooms and a modernized cafeteria with completion set for fall 2019.

In other health care facility news:

• Hammes Co., Brookfield, Wis., was selected to serve as the owner’s representative for the construction of a new facility at Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children’s North Campus, Frisco, Texas.

  Hammes will work with Scottish Rite Hospital’s staff and a construction team that includes HKS Architects and The Beck Group general contracting services to complete the new building, which is expected to open in fall 2018.

  The five-story ambulatory care center will offer clinics and day-surgeries for children with orthopedic needs, including spine, hip, hand and foot disorders.

• Construction has started on new inpatient hospital rooms in the medical-surgical department at Mayo Clinic Health System–Northland in Barron, Wis.

  The $4.9 million, 8,778-square-foot project will include 10 new rooms, each with a private bathroom with safety rails, wheelchair accessibility and lift systems. The expanded rooms will feature remote-control lights and temperature that can be controlled from a patient’s bed. Also, a 5,600-square-foot shell space will be constructed for future replacement of the Family Birth Center.

Construction is expected to take about one year.

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