According to a press release on September 12th, Turner Construction and Pike Construction Services celebrated their groundbreaking of the $650m Strong Memorial Hospital expansion and modernization project in Rochester, New York. 

Hammes Company, LLC, will appear for The University of Rochester Medical Center, and the architect for the project is Ballinger. 

The project's groundbreaking follows Turner and Pike's demolition work in March on the west part of the current emergency department building. They collaboratively removed 300 tons of materials gathered from an assortment of brick buildings located immediately next to that part of the department. 

In addition to tripling the size of Strong Memorial Hospital's Emergency Department, the Strong Expansion Project aims to increase 650,000 square feet of contemporary space and a new nine-story patient tower. The project will include several beds and care capacity to address the hospital and its community needs. 

According to the university, the ER expansion and the new tower will aid in resolving the community's ongoing bed scarcity and emergency department congestion difficulties, worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Mike Ziobrowski, the project executive of Turner Construction, said, "The University of Rochester Medical Center's Strong Memorial Hospital expansion project is not just about bricks and mortar; it's about enhancing the well-being of our neighbors by addressing our community's present and future healthcare needs. With dedication and precision, we are shaping a legacy of care."

The project will gradually expand the emergency department and the hospital's Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program to include more than 200 examination, treatment, and patient monitoring stations. It will increase the footprint in those departments from 32,000 to 120,000 square feet in total. 

Over 100 private inpatient rooms will be available in the nine-story inpatient bed tower, which will also have additional floors for future operating rooms and treatment facilities for the Emergency Department. 

Rufus Judson, the CEO of Pike Construction, said, "Pike is proud to be a part of the team for this project, together with our trade partners and the entire upstate New York construction industry. The Strong Expansion Project will have a transformative impact on our community."

Recently, the New York City-based Turner Construction completed a healthcare project with a target of renovating the 12,000-square foot area of the behavioral health unit at the MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Clinton. On the other hand, Pike Construction has long been in the Western New York region since its establishment in 1873 in Rochester.

Notably, this project marks a significant turning point in the University of Rochester's history since it is the university's largest-scale capital investment to date. The Statewide Health Care Facility Transformation Program grant, which provided $50 million in funding from New York State to this endeavor, was a crucial boost. The federal funding contributed $1 million for the program. 

Due to this extensive expansion, the Strong Expansion Project will create the largest orthopedics campus in the Northeast, significantly boosting healthcare accessibility and services for Rochester and communities throughout the New York western region.

As per the schedule, the project is anticipated to finish in 2027.