Freeman White of San Diego is the project architect for the vertical expansion project, with Sun Valley’s Tower General Contractors serving as general contractor. Construction of the 80,000-sq-ft building began in November 2008 and should be finished in early 2011.

According to Tower project manager Mahmoud Saheli, the task of working in an open hospital as busy as Huntington has been daunting.

“It’s difficult to keep bringing material in when you have to keep it all away from the jobsite,” Saheli says. “We have to pay twice for everything – to bring in materials like columns and beams offsite and then to bring them in for installation.”

When completed, the project will more than double the size of Huntington’s woefully overcrowded Emergency Room Department, the only remaining ER servicing all of Pasadena. The department will expand from the current 21-bed, 18,000-sq-ft facility to 53 beds within 40,000 sq ft located on the first floor of the building.

The uses for the second and third floors have not yet been determined, while the fourth floor will most likely be used for equipment storage.

The Project Team:

Owner: Huntington Hospital, Pasadena
General Contractor: Tower General Contractors, Sun Valley
Project Architect: Freeman White, San Diego