Healthcare Design - December 2014 - 55

DINING - REMODEL/RENOVATION

Eisenhower Medical Center, (Café 34) Walter and Leonore Annenberg Pavilion's Food/
Nutritional Services and Dining Room Rancho MiRage, califoRnia
Submitted by: Moon Mayoras Architects, Inc.
Jury comments:
*	 Impressed	by	the	outdoor	water	
feature,	the	interactive	design	
process,	and	the	ceiling	details.	
The	renovation	improved	flow	in	the	
servery.
*	 Access	to	light	and	views	has	positive	
impact.
*	 Fun	and	welcoming	spaces,	colors,	
lighting.	Great	use	of	indoor/outdoor	
space.	Interesting	flow	and	good	
break-up	of	seating	into	comfortable	
groupings.	Will	provide	a	good	break	
for	family,	visitors	and	staff	from	
normal	hospital	functions	and	stress.

In 2009, Eisenhower Medical Center (EMC), located in Rancho Mirage,
California, began construction on the
Walter and Leonore Annenberg Pavilion, their largest hospital expansion
in more than 40 years. In addition to
supplying 270 additional licensed beds
to their inpatient capacity, the primary
objective of the expansion project was
to enhance the overall patient care
experience by providing patient and
family-friendly amenities throughout
the Pavilion.
As part of the project, the architect
evaluated each of EMC's support
services to determine its capacity to
support the current patient volume
and the 270 additional inpatient beds.
Although some support services
were identified for possible expansion in place, EMC decided to fully
replace the antiquated 40-year-old

food service department space with
a state-of-the-art, 21,000-square-foot
Food and Nutritional Services Area
and Dining Room.
Named in honor of Dwight D.
Eisenhower, the 34th President of the
United States, Café 34 was designed
on the lower level of the new Annenberg Pavilion with direct access
to EMC's inpatient bed units above
and the medical center's main public
thoroughfare. Café 34 features a brand
new state-of-the-art kitchen, four
contemporary bistro-ambiance dining
areas separated by partitions, and one
private dining room.
Open seven days a week, Café 34
was designed to replace the previous
traditional cafeteria and supports
EMC's room service/hospitality tray
service to inpatients while offering
a variety of healthy and nutritious

dietary selections for fresh production to physicians, staff, families, and
visitors.
The scratch production kitchen
features a receiving cooler for distribution of all refrigerated product
and a food bank for low temperature storage after blast chilling. The
layout was configured to provide for
dedicated short order cooking for
tray line production and employee
access to silverware washing via the
servery without interruption to food
production areas.
Café 34's dining areas each enjoy a
view of an outdoor dining patio. The
hospital hosts special events on the
dining patio from December through
May as permitted by the cooler desert
climate. The dining rooms and patio
face westward toward the Annenberg
Pavilion's signature water feature and

boast a stunning backdrop of the Santa
Rosa/San Jacinto Mountains.
EMC's Café 34 was designed as
a vital component of the medical
center's "Health Care as It Should
Be" campaign. Patients, physicians,
and staff were integral to the userintensive Café 34 iterative design
collaboration process. The designer
engaged EMC's executive chef,
dietitians, nurses, and service staff
through multiple user group meetings
to share experiences with the former
EMC cafeteria, provide suggestions
to improve the food preparation and
service process, review the design of
the new facility, and help implement
strategies to create the cultural and
physical paradigm shifts required to
provide EMC with a more patientand family-friendly model of food
service delivery.

Supplement to Healthcare Design * 12.14

53_A

Moon Mayoras architects, inc. (before); steve Mcclelland PhotograPhy (after)

*	 Very	well	done.	Nice	to	read	that	this	
renovation	was	undertaken	with	staff	
input.	

BEFORE
Healthcare Design - December 2014

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