SUGAR LAND, TEXAS — HOK Houston has completed the $296 million expansion of Methodist Sugar Land Hospital, located at 16655 Southwest Freeway in Sugar Land. The original 37-bed community health center was expanded by 341,000 square feet to include more than 180 beds, with the capacity to grow to 256 beds in case of emergency. This addition to the hospital, which was constructed independently of the original building, comes in response to the rapid population growth Sugar Land and Fort Bend County have experienced in the past few years.
“Right at the time [HOK was selected for the project], Fort Bend County was one of the fastest growing counties in the country,” says Ron Smith, HOK Houston senior associate, healthcare. “For a couple of years, it was the fast growing county.”
At a time when the community was growing, many people seeking medical treatment had to go elsewhere for services. So HOK designed a facility that would provide Fort Bend County residents with all of the medical services they would need. The 180 hospital beds in the expansion are divided between 168 acute care beds and 20 ICU beds. The expansion also includes three cardiac catheterization labs; additional labor and delivery suites; enhanced services in the existing departments of critical care, emergency, surgery and imaging; and five centers of excellence that include heart, cancer, orthopedics, neurosciences and urology. A 1,000-space parking garage was also constructed, which includes a rooftop helipad with a trauma elevator.
Other features include healing gardens and landscaping that are incorporated into the 37-acre hospital campus, as well as abundant natural light within patient rooms — all of which are designed to reduce patient stress levels. While the hospital is poised to excel at providing patient services, Smith is looking to provide the total package.
“The quality of the environment, we are learning more and more, is equally important,” he adds.
Other additions to the Methodist Sugar Land Hospital campus include a 120,000-square-foot medical office building, which broke ground over the summer and is expected to be complete in the third quarter of 2009. The hospital will grow incrementally to its ultimate goal of 600 beds, with additional room at the campus for more medical office buildings and parking.