View from the 16th Floor
Capping a facility that will provide 320 patient care rooms and world class health care services, Loma Linda University Health’s new adult hospital tower’s sixteenth floor will house a new conference and education center, as well as a new helipad landing area.
The conference center will be the site of a range of educational conferences and special events, many of them showcasing Loma Linda University Health’s education, research and clinical care.
The helipad will allow patients facing immediate health crises to be brought to the Medical Center via helicopter, reducing transportation time, and facilitating more immediate treatment for the most urgent needs.
Visitors to the sixteenth floor will be greeted with stunning views of the main Loma Linda campus and a number of Inland Empire communities. The view is a vastly different one from Loma Linda University Health’s founders would have seen. One of the institution’s founders, John Burden, described the early 1900’s San Bernardino valley as “. . . one of the fairest, richest scenes in Southern California.” The City of San Bernardino’s population in 1910 was 12,799. In 2018 population had grown to 216,239.
The 16-story steel frame of the new Medical Center tower is the tallest building in San Bernardino County. Sharing a common pedestal of five stories, it is parallel to the new Children’s Hospital tower, which, standing at nine stories tall, was topped off in September. Combined, the two towers share approximately 25 thousand tons of steel.
When completed, the new hospital facilities will be a place where 4,700 students and 700 residents progress in their education. Many of those students will become long-term members of the Loma Linda University Health team, while others will take what they have learned here to communities across the globe.
Construction of the new facilities was announced in 2014 as a part of Vision 2020 – The Campaign for a Whole Tomorrow, the organization’s largest philanthropic endeavor in its 110-year history, which to date has raised more than $300 million.
You can follow the rise of the towers on a daily basis by checking the construction web cams.
We're sharing photographic updates of the hospital construction work on a periodic basis. Watch for special emphasis on some of the behind-the-scenes-views and untold stories at the Vision 2020 website.
This vignette is adapted from a blog by Dennis E. Park, which appears on the website www.docuvision2020.com.