Jesse Brown VA Medical Center Tower Addition. Department of Veterans Affairs

Project Details

DeMaria was hired by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to build a 240,000 square foot hospital addition to the Jesse Brown Medical Center in downtown Chicago, IL.

The new building features seven state-of-the-art operating rooms, including a cardiology suite, a cystoscopy room, two minor procedure rooms, and recovery areas.  Together with a new inpatient pharmacy, the new operating rooms occupy much of the ground and second floors.  The upper floors house 200 new inpatient beds in private and semi-private rooms. A two-story glass curtain wall corridor overlooks the interior courtyard and connects pedestrian traffic to the existing building.

This project was challenging due to the very tight site constraints with limited space for staging and storage of materials.  Also, the underground utility tunnels had conduits and pipes unknown by the VA that were tested to ensure they were not live or hazardous.  The entire project was constructed while maintaining the operations of the existing medical facilities.