Rendering courtesy of UW Health
Project officials announced a milestone in the University of Wisconsin Eastpark Medical Center ambulatory center, as Mortenson, JP Cullen and Wells team up to complete a concrete parking deck by early 2024.
In 2022, UW Health concocted a plan for a 469,000-square-foot, seven-story ambulatory clinic on the west side of the hospital center outside of Madison. The medical center has been fully erected, and work began on a parking deck using prefabricated concrete, Clinton Krell, business development manager for Wells, said.
The project is set for completion in fall of 2024, when it will be turned over to owner UW Health, project officials said. Project partners include Milwaukee-based GRAEF and architecture firm HKS.
The ambulatory facility will house specialties such as women’s complex care, adult cancer care, advanced imaging and laboratory services and clinical trials, UW Health officials said. Breaking ground was a “momentous step forward,” Alan Kaplan, CEO of UW Health, said in a statement.
UW Health contracted JP Cullen and Mortenson to partner and build an ambulatory clinic with two towers, JP Cullen officials said. The south site of the new campus will have the only upright proton therapy treatment center, a type of radiation treatment for cancer patients, in North America, officials added.
Crews are working on the medical building enclosure now and aim to make the building watertight in the fall, Steven Mumm, senior project manager for UW Health, said. Prefabricated construction of the attached parking garage is 90% complete, he added.
Now that the ambulatory structure is complete, Wells is halfway finished building a five-story, 846-stall parking garage with spaces for electric vehicles, Krell said. Two prefabrication manufacturing centers in Wisconsin and Minnesota are expediting the process.
“Since we have manufacturing facilities in multiple states, we were able to use a Wisconsin facility and Minnesota facility to expedite delivery of (prefabricated concrete). There’s a lot of prefabricated material that goes into this structure, so we were able to have two of our plants team up and get through the design and production phases faster than if one plant produced it all,” Krell added.
Wells used a CNC machine, which uses automated tools controlled by a preprogrammed computer, to create formwork for the parking deck. The structure is supposed to blend seamlessly with the complex architecture of the main building with fins and in-set faceted windows.
“We were able to use new technology to produce formwork for those complex architectural pieces. We used our CNC machine to create formwork that’s rather complex, more complex than what we’ve done in the past so we’re exploring new territory to create a higher-end product,” Krell added.
Crews will install a photovoltaic array on top of the parking deck and the array is expected to generate power for 30% the campus, Wells officials said. Both the solar arrays and electric vehicle charging stations were a design consideration since the project was first planned more than a year ago, officials added.
The solar array is made of 2,064 panels that will cover the top floor of the parking garage supply over 1 megawatt of power to the facility Mumm said. Quest Renewables designed the system and consulted with HKS, Graef and IMEG. Mortenson and JP Cullen crews with Staff Electric will complete on-site construction, Mumm said.
The garage also had six dual head ChargePoint EV chargers, Mumm added. Staff Electric will install the EV chargers.
Planning for the Eastpark Medical Facility started in 2018 and UW Health engaged with architects, engineers and construction management in 2019, Mumm said. The project paused due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but stakeholders continued design and broke ground in April of 2022.
This article was authored by Ethan Duran and was originally published here.
