UC Davis Health today hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for the medical center’s California Tower. The expansion project includes a 14-story hospital tower and 5-story pavilion that will deliver superior care for Northern Californians and adapt to meet the evolving needs of the community.

“The addition of the California Tower to UC Davis Medical Center is a testament to our innovative forward thinking across our health system and main campus,” said UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May. “This project will position our researchers, students, faculty and staff to meet and adapt to regional health care needs for the next 50 years.”

May spoke in the construction zone to an energized audience of university leaders, elected officials, project collaborators, and construction and facilities management workers.

University leaders, elected officials and project collaborators gathered to break ground on the UC Davis Medical Center's California Tower.California Tower construction

Approved by the UC Board of Regents in January 2022, the California Tower will be part of the region’s most advanced medical center. The new hospital and pavilion will be in addition to the medical center’s existing University and Davis Towers.

The new tower will add nearly one million square feet of space to the eastern side of the existing medical center. It will include new operating rooms, an imaging center, leading edge facilities for pharmacy and burn care units, and about 334 private rooms for patients.

More than 250 of the rooms are being designed for greater flexibility in the event of a patient surge such as a pandemic, massive wildfire or other disaster. These will easily convert into intensive-care-unit rooms with air isolation to treat patients of any level of hospitalization.

UC Davis Health CEO David Lubarsky shows Assemblymember Kevin McCarty a rendering of the future California Tower.

“With the California Tower, we are building a new paradigm of patient care, centered around how a health system can deliver tomorrow’s health care today,” said David Lubarsky, CEO of UC Davis Health. “We are building into this new tower some of the lessons we learned from the recent pandemic. As an example, three out of four of the rooms in this new tower can be easily converted to fully functional ICUs if needed, tripling our ICU capacity.”

When the California Tower is open for patients in 2030, Lubarsky added, it will continue the hospital’s 150-year legacy of “caring for those who need it most, delivering superior patient outcomes while becoming more sustainable, and keeping our focus on improving health outcomes and equity.”

The $3.74 billion tower will replace parts of the hospital that must close due to state seismic regulations. Hospitals across California are in the process of upgrading their existing facilities or constructing new buildings that can withstand major earthquakes.

The current, 646-bed hospital — the largest in the Sacramento area — will have a total of 675 to 700 inpatient beds when the project is expected to be complete in 2030.

A southwest aerial view of the California Tower, which includes a 14-story hospital facility and 5-story pavilion adjacent to the existing medical center.Supporting the community

The California Tower project is expected to create hundreds of construction jobs and thousands of new health care positions for the surrounding community. It’s one of many benefits of being home to an anchor institution like UC Davis Medical Center.

Anchor institutions are place-based, mission-driven entities like universities and hospitals that leverage economic power alongside human and intellectual resources to improve the long-term health and social welfare of surrounding communities.

“The hospital tower we're breaking ground on today represents another pivotal investment in our city by UC Davis,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. “Both this tower and the new Aggie Square innovation campus will create thousands of new, high-quality jobs and expand our ability to meet the health care needs of our residents.”

UC Davis Health plans to help fuel the economic health and overall wellbeing of the neighborhoods surrounding its Sacramento campus by:

Hiring and developing local workforce talent Purchasing more goods and services from local vendors Investing in local projects that support vulnerable communities Engaging employees to volunteer in local neighborhoods

“This project further harnesses the advantages of UC Davis Medical Center being Sacramento’s No. 1 hospital and delivering nationally ranked care,” Lubarsky said. “UC Davis Health is Sacramento County’s second-largest employer, and we’re making sure we are bringing not only health care, but jobs and community wealth-building to our surrounding neighborhoods.”

He added: “I am so grateful for the collaborative planning effort that has spanned years, and required so much hard work and coordination, to bring us to this point of breaking ground for this new hospital tower.”

Learn more about the California Tower project by visiting the Vision 2030 website.

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