A health care construction boom has hit the Bay Area, caused by California’s looming 2030 seismic safety deadline and a changing care delivery model that favors smaller, more specialized facilities alongside major hospital upgrades.
Data from the California Department of Health Care Access and Information shows total construction costs for health care projects in the nine-county region reached $2.67 billion in October 2024, the San Francisco Business Times reported. That figure is short of the $4.2 billion peak in 2017, but it’s the highest since the pandemic.
Sutter Health’s $422 million, five-story neuroscience complex at 3555 Cesar Chavez Street sits inside its Mission Bernal campus and looms as one of the region’s largest active projects. Breaking ground in June and slated to open in 2028, the facility will consolidate key neurology services, including the Ray Dolby Brain Health Center and Forbes Norris MDA/ALS Research and Treatment Center, and serve as a regional neurosurgery and stroke hub.
Other major undertakings include Sutter’s planned $1 billion, 1.3-million-square-foot Emeryville hospital; UCSF Health’s $3.8 billion, 900,000-square-foot Helen Diller Hospital at Parnassus; Kaiser Permanente’s 303-bed San Jose Medical Center; and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland’s $300 million seismic rebuild.
Alongside these megaprojects are smaller sites. Sutter’s 11,000-square-foot Livermore care center, opened in June and designed by HED with construction by Skanska USA, offers pediatric and adult exam corridors, imaging and lab services. It’s part of a rollout of 14 similar centers over two years, leveraging standardized designs to speed delivery and reduce costs.
Interior patient-focused upgrades are also evident at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health’s Bass Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases. Its newly opened outpatient clinic and infusion center now has 14 exam rooms and 15 private infusion bays, accommodating 25,000 annual visits, including 7,000 infusions for children with cancer and other blood disorders.
Whether large or small, those projects are racing against the seismic compliance clock while aiming to improve patient access and outcomes. As Christina Oh, Sutter’s Greater San Francisco president, put it: Success hinges on “seeing more patients faster” while maintaining clinical excellence and cutting-edge research.
—Joel Russell
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