The first phase of a $371 million project to transform Arkansas Children’s hospital campuses in Little Rock and Springdale is set to open in May.
Children’s announced the multiyear project, the largest expansion in its 114-year history, in May 2023.
The construction work will feature 265,000 SF of new space between the two campuses and about 170,000 SF of renovated space.
The first phase includes green space, a new building, a skybridge and a new entrance at the Little Rock campus, which recently has been named Arkansas Children’s Golisano Campus. It was named after philanthropist B. Thomas Golisano, who pledged $50 million to the state’s only pediatric health system.
The expansion project for both campuses will be paid for with up to $162 million in bonds. In 2023, Arkansas Children’s issued $134 million in bonds for the Little Rock campus.
Plans also call for Arkansas Children’s to use its cash reserves and donations specifically for the construction.
Also on the Little Rock campus, construction is underway on the $75 million, 65,000-SF National Center for Opioid Research & Clinical Effectiveness building.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin is using $55 million of opioid and vaping settlement money for the three-story building. Construction started in July and is expected to be completed in early 2027.
Meanwhile, construction to expand Arkansas Children’s Northwest by about 72,000 SF is scheduled to be completed in December. The first phase, work to increase the number of inpatient beds from 25 to 40, is expected to be completed in the fall.
The LR Campus
“The experience really starts when you arrive on campus,” said Wendell Kinzler, associate principal of Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects’ Little Rock office. Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects and Cromwell Architects Engineers, both of Little Rock, are the designers on both projects. Nabholz Construction of Conway is the lead contractor.
A new three-story main entrance made of glass walls replaces the entrance to the hospital that sat just north of it.
Arkansas Children’s wanted natural light and nature themes, such as the Arkansas River, for the campus construction, Kinzler said. “There are elements on the facade that create movement,” he said. The theme of the design work is to show that the patients are on a path, “and we use the river as a kind of pathway,” Kinzler said.
The Little Rock campus also will surround a park, “which they have never had anything to this level of green space,” he said. “You imagine that’s kind of the center point. And then the facades are sort of reacting to this energy that’s creating this movement.”
The lobby will feature a grand staircase and “a large butterfly sculpture that weaves throughout the entire space,” said Kelsi Keller, director of operations for Arkansas Children’s.
The sculptures have been created for the hospital and will be installed in April, she said. “And the butterflies also represent a patient’s journey through the hospital and the migration that they go from birth to adulthood, or like from coming in scared or being sick to being cured.”
New Surgery Facility
A new skywalk attaches the hospital on the third floor to the 150,000-SF outpatient surgery facility that opens in May.
The building includes sports medicine and physical therapy services with orthopedics on its first floor, a clinical laboratory as well as Arkansas Children’s Pediatric Clinical Research Unit on the second floor, and an outpatient surgery center on the third.
“We have an orthopedic clinic and a very small sports medicine gym in the main hospital right now,” said Arkansas Children’s President and CEO Marcy Doderer. “So we’re really amplifying our ability to take care of those kids by expanding it and creating much more patient-centric spaces.”
The rehabilitation space includes a basketball court and grass turf flooring. “What’s really unique about this space is that we are creating flooring that is consistent with the athletes and what they do in their day-to-day sports, so that they can rehab on the same floor” that they play sports on, Keller said.
Also on the first floor are the orthopedic exam rooms. The new building expands the number of exam rooms from 16 to 26, and there will also be dedicated rooms to place casts on patients.
Expanded Services
Arkansas Children’s will install lab equipment that’s designed to transfer a specimen vial to different machines, like an assembly line, eliminating the need for a tech employee to do that mundane task, Keller said.
On the same floor as the lab will be the Pediatric Clinical Research Unit, which is expanding from about six rooms to 16 exam rooms and will be triple the size of the one that’s on the second floor of the hospital, Keller said.
On the third floor of the building will be the outpatient operating rooms.
“We do outpatient surgery every day in our main operating rooms, but this will allow us to build out an operating suite only designed to take care of outpatients,” Doderer said.
After the first phase is completed, construction will begin in the summer on the interior renovation of the Little Rock hospital.
“We’re going to modernize a lot of our clinic spaces,” Keller said.
That project has two phases, with each phase expected to require about a year. Construction work is expected to be completed sometime in 2028.
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