Healthcare Design - August 2015 - 30

From scratch
Built in 1954, the existing Parkland Memorial Hospital's
1 million square feet houses 720 patient rooms, of which
only about 30 percent are private and even fewer have
showers, with double-loaded 8-foot corridors and an
aging infrastructure that left few options for renovation
or reuse. Although a replacement was first proposed in
the mid-'90s, it took about a decade of thorough data
analysis (building assessments, volume projections) to
get the project off the ground.
A $747 million bond referendum was placed on the
county ballot in November 2008 and approved by
82 percent of voters. That sum was just a piece of
30 HCDmagazine.com 08.15

the overall funding puzzle, which includes $150 million
in philanthropic support, $40 million in investment
income, and $392 million in hospital reserves. Parkland already owned a brownfield site just across from
the existing hospital on Harry Hines Boulevard with
enough acreage for the replacement.
Parkland brought in Blue Cottage Consulting to
develop the program even before the bond issue
was passed, so when the design team joint venture
of HDR + Corgan was brought on board in 2009,
with a program but no master plan (a previous plan
had been scrapped for various reasons), it was
handed a unique scenario. "Usually you develop
the master plan and the program, and the master
plan dictates the placement of the building and you
design the building within that framework," says Hank
Adams, design manager for the project and director
of healthcare for HDR (Dallas). Instead, the team
had the luxury-albeit an intimidating one, Adams
describes-to start with a rare blank slate and create
a building that's truly assimilated within its site, thanks
to the opportunity to simultaneously design the building and master plan the campus. "We learned that
[doing both] can be done and that you can actually

Top: With views to the gardens
outside for sightlines, the
building's first-floor atrium is
designed with the patient and
visitor experience in mind,
offering convenient registration
kiosks built into the reception
desk and distinct wayfinding
paths. Above: One of the key
inspirations for the master plan
of the new facility was to "put
the park back in Parkland."
The site's gardens feature
drought-tolerant plantings
reminiscent of the Texas
landscape, with this main
garden accessible from the
building's cafeteria, too.

ARCHITECT: HDR + CORGAN, © 2014 ANDREW POGUE

AT 2.1 MILLION SQUARE feet and an anticipated

30,000 people passing through its doors each day,
Dallas County's New Parkland Hospital, opening
Aug. 20, is a monumental achievement in more
ways than one.
Since its inception in 2008, the $1.33 billion,
862-bed facility remained the nation's largest
healthcare construction project in progress and,
now completed, today stands among the largest
public hospitals in the U.S.-an outlier to industry
norms that would define a building half its size as a
"megaproject." However, it isn't just square footage
that's set Parkland apart.
With two architects, four general contractors,
countless stakeholders, hefty public funding,
persistent media scrutiny, and a directive to create
a hospital of choice regardless of its safety-net
designation-all planned, designed, and built at the
same time healthcare reform was being realized-the
completion of Parkland was, in short, no easy task.
And although it's unlikely that many will follow
in its particular footsteps-or footprint-the story
of Parkland started just like so many others: The
county needed a new hospital to replace its antiquated building.
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Healthcare Design - August 2015

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