OC Health Care Agency chooses contractor for $78M HQ in Irvine

A Canadian contractor will soon build a $78.2 million Irvine headquarters for Orange County’s public health agency.

PCL Construction Services, based in Edmonton, was approved by the county to design and build a new campus for the OC Health Care Agency on Marine Way, across from the Great Park, the Orange County Register reported. The agency is now based in Santa Ana.

The project is expected to break ground by next summer and be completed by December 2024. Details about the size of the project and its new address were not immediately available.

The new headquarters will include administrative offices, a pharmacy and lab, warehouse space and an emergency operations center.

The agency realized early in the pandemic that the space used for emergency operations, which brings in staff from multiple county departments to coordinate responses, was too small, OC Health Care Agency Assistant Director Mindy Winterswyk told the Register.

The new facilities will provide a larger pharmacy and a modern lab to replace one that was out-of-date, she said. The administrative staff of the agency’s Communicable Disease Control Division also has grown and needs more office space.

The new campus will bring together all the agency’s functions that don’t directly serve patients “so everyone’s in the same space and efficiently communicating,” Winterswyk said.

Orange County will use funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and State Enhanced Laboratory Capacity grants to help pay for the project.
Irvine has been the center of recent medical development.

Hoag Hospital Irvine has launched a $1 billion expansion of more than 1 million square feet, doubling its number of beds.

This year, City of Hope opened its Lennar outpatient cancer center off Barranca Parkway and is now building the $1 billion cancer hospital next door, to open in 2025. UC Irvine expects to open its $1.3 billion medical complex and 144-bed hospital the same year.

— Dana Bartholomew

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