By Andrew Flanigan, Senior Planner/Designer with Devenney Group
Hello, my name is Andrew Flanigan, Senior Planner/Designer with Devenney Group. We are the architectural firm commissioned to design the new Sutter Medical Center in Castro Valley. My role with the project is lead project designer, and right now I’m working with the team to help get the plans ready for approval by all authorities, from state to county to municipal regulatory boards, so we can begin construction. I wanted to first give you a glimpse of what the new medical center is going to look like.
The new replacement hospital will be an iconic building that reflects modern technology and the latest standards in healthcare. Because it will be built on the same hill as Eden Medical Center, the new hospital will be the focal point of the surrounding area. Through the design on which the project team had input, we reduced the scale of the building by integrating it with the hillside, and by creating a horizontal feel to the architecture.
The hospital bed tower, which will be seven stories high, will be the most prominent element of the campus. Through extensive shadow and massing studies, the current design reflects the most efficient form and orientation to minimize impacts on our surrounding neighbors.
Other design features were incorporated to enhance the site as well as screen back of house functions from the neighborhood, such as where trucks unload supplies. These outdoor features consist of a living wall, a fully landscaped visual and noise buffer, as well as outdoor gathering spaces.
The outdoor gardens will be available for patients, visitors, doctors, hospital staff and also the community. The latest sustainable landscaping techniques will be used throughout the campus. The main outdoor gathering space will be located on the lower level just outside the cafeteria, and allows for outdoor dining, rest and contemplation. The design also incorporates several more intimate outdoor spaces throughout the site.
The exterior of the building provides a light and airy feel with the use of natural and long lasting earth toned materials as well as different color glass to add vibrancy to the tower element. The high efficiency tinted glazing enables us to maximize windows in all patient rooms to enhance the healing environment.
The new medical office building, which will be four stories high, is designed to complement the new hospital in form and function. The hospital and medical office building are connected on four stories using open walkways so patients, physicians and staff can easily move between the two buildings.
Whether it is a routine clinic visit or a scheduled major surgery, the campus becomes a one-stop-shop for all medical needs; a healthcare destination for the community. Please see our Photo Gallery for more illustrations of the new medical center, plus we’ll be adding new ones, so keep visiting here. You may want to subscribe to this blog for regular updates.
I am very excited to be sharing this first glimpse of the building with you. Please don’t hesitate to contact me by leaving a comment here, with your questions or feedback, in our effort to make the design better!
By George Bischalaney, President & CEO, Eden Medical Center
The Next Generation Hospital. The new Sutter Medical Center, Castro Valley.
Hello, and welcome to our new Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley blog. As CEO, I want to introduce our new blog site and invite you to participate in conversations with us as about the new hospital and medical office building that will replace Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley. I’m very excited to be able to share information and engage with you as we create a state-of-the-art medical complex from design, through the regulatory approval process and finally through each phase of construction, up to the opening in early 2013. It is a long, exciting journey and I look forward to taking you along.
It is clear to us that we need to hear from you, our extended community—patients, neighbors, employees, physicians and business partners—in order to help us meet our goals. We know that many of you who are reading this blog will have strong opinions you would like to share with us. We too feel that communication should not be only one-way. We believe that all of us are more effective when we work together and collaborate to solve problems, address questions openly and discuss issues of importance to the entire community. After all, this is your community hospital and medical center, and we are here to serve your health needs as well as we possibly can. This is our primary goal.
To fulfill that mission and our pledge to include the community in building a medical center that will serve everyone’s needs, we have launched a Social Media outreach program using the Web to not only keep you informed, but to give you a chance to interact with us so we can address your questions and concerns. Our blog will serve as your Internet “headquarters,” where you can find updated information and links to our main Eden Medical Center web site, plus links to other popular online social networks where we have started groups and online communities for further discussion about the new medical center.
Through a variety of social media tools, including our blog, Internet video clips, podcasts, popular social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, FriendFeed and others, you will get regular updates on our progress, plus you’ll have the opportunity to comment back, ask questions, and give us your opinions and perspectives. You’ll be able to converse with hospital administrators, the architects, our Social Media project team, clinical staff and other key people from Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley. We’ll feature posts from guest bloggers, as well as podcast and Web video interviews.
By the way, we did a survey about the community’s use of social media and social networks, but if you did not know about it before, your input is still very valuable to us. You can still take the short, fun Social Media Survey.
We would love to know if you are aware of other social or online neighborhood networks that we may not have covered, such as a Yahoo, Google, AOL or Ning groups. If so, please let us know. We would be glad to participate on already existing online neighborhood, business or other networks to provide information and discuss relevant matters with your communities.
To date, much of the work in bringing our vision to reality has been behind the scenes. Our design team has worked closely with physicians, employees and medical center trustees to help envision our future campus. In the very near future, we will have more detailed exterior images that highlight the buildings and the campus changes. Much of this is still subject to refinement to meet local and State approvals.
We invite you to subscribe to our blog by email or RSS feed…please note the box above, where you can enter your email address, or you can click on the orange RSS symbol above it to subscribe in an online reader (such as Google Reader). Your email address will remain private and will not be shared with other organizations for commercial purposes. If you subscribe, you’ll be alerted by email or in your reader whenever there is a new post to read on our blog.
If you want more information about Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley, you can find basic information on our About page.
For healthcare information, please visit our main web site.
Thank you for visiting, and please feel free to leave a comment or question in the space below. We’ll be glad to respond within a day or two.
George Bischalaney
President & CEO
Eden Medical Center
By Cassandra Phelps Clark, Project Communications Director
Hello. My name is Cassandra Phelps Clark, and I have been a part of the Eden Medical Center family for 19 years now. Most people in the community recognize me as the communications director and spokesperson for the hospital. But for the past year, I have had the incredible opportunity to work as part of the project team to build a new hospital in Castro Valley. After being part of the hospital’s leadership team and working toward this goal for the past ten years, it is very exciting to be a part of this project and to focus my energy toward something so vital to our community.
A new medical center means far more than just the construction of new buildings and roadways. It means we will continue to have the best medical care, right in our own community. It means that thousands of people who provide care and support will have a great place to work. It means we can attract the most talented physicians from across the country to practice medicine here. It means our children, our parents, all of us, will have access to a safe, comfortable place of healing. I believe in this project, and I know that every member of our team is committed to our mission and purpose.
You’ll see from the plans for the new hospital that it isn’t just a replacement hospital. If we merely replicate the old Eden Medical Center, we will just get another old medical center, with the same inherent problems of an inefficient and outdated building. No, the world is far different than it was when Eden opened in 1954. And so is medicine. And so, for that matter, is building design. (Photo: Eden Medical Center. The current hospital will not be functional as an acute care hospital after January 1, 2013.)
The innovative design of this building introduces new concepts to make it the best experience for the patient and staff. The Universal Care Center, for example, allows greater flexibility and efficiency for observing patients without strain on the acute care units or the emergency room.
All of the rooms are private, a far cry from the existing two and four-bed wards that exist today. Registration areas are designed for the patients, so that services come to the patients rather than patients traveling throughout the hospital for services. We’ll have more detail on all of these areas as we hear from our bloggers about the latest innovations in design, technology, construction, sustainability and many other features that will make the new campus a beacon of pride and inspiration in our community.
Today, as we move forward with our plans and seek approvals from regulatory agencies, we are constantly aware of the state’s deadline for SB 1953, the seismic safety standards for all hospitals. The state legislature established these standards to ensure that vital medical services are available to the community in times ofeven during a disaster. Yet this is an unfunded requirement so enormous that it dwarfs the ability of even the most financially sound hospitals to pay for it. Many hospitals, including several in this region, are relying on public funding or taxes, and others are seeking relief through legislation that extends the deadline.
But I see any delays as dangerous. These earthquake standards exist for a reason. Just as we saw with the levees that failed in Louisiana or the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota, delays in making our structures safe—whether it’s because of money or bureaucracy—leave everyone vulnerable. We now have a fully-funded and comprehensive plan to build a new hospital and trauma center in Castro Valley. Sutter Health, and all of us involved in this project are committed to moving ahead and building an amazing medical center, a source of pride and a safe, healing environment.
I encourage you to take the time to review the plans now and throughout this project; and interact with us, ask questions, provide suggestions. I look forward to our conversations!
Cassandra Phelps
Project Communications Director
Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley
We have launched a Social Media outreach program, using the Web to keep you informed about our progress in building the new Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley, a Sutter Health affiliate, which will eventually replace Eden Medical Center; and we want to provide you with a forum to interact with us so we can address your questions and concerns. Our blog will serve as your Internet “headquarters,” where you can find updated information and links to our main Eden Medical Center web site, plus you’ll find links to other popular online social networks in the right sidebar, where we have started groups and online communities for further discussion about the new medical center.
We hope you’ll subscribe by email or RSS feed—please go to the “Subscribe by Email” box or the orange RSS icon on the upper right corner of the blog. The blog will be updated every week, so come back and visit us often.
We look forward to hearing from you and starting a conversation! Please feel free to comment at the bottom of any of the posts. Scroll down this page to read the most recent posts by our Blog Team.
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