Healthcare

Southwest Washington Medical Center Expansion, Vancouver, WA
Owner: Southwest Washington Medical Center
Client/Architect: NBBJ
Completion: 2007

The cornerstone of this $105 million expansion is a new eight-story patient tower featuring a heart and vascular center, bone and joint center, and brain and spine center. A new central utility plant and parking expansion complete the project.

Open view architecture highlights the extraordinary utilities inside the central utility plant:

• One 175-ton chiller and two 390-ton chillers provide enough cooling power to cool two Fox Towers or 20 Lloyd Center ice rinks or make 130,000 Sno Cones per hour.
• Two buried 30,000 gallon fuel oil tanks and a 25,000 gallon fire water storage tank with two pumps. The CUP pumps enough water every hour to float 10 grey whales.
• Three boiler systems offer between 300 and 600 horsepower for steam generation. That’s enough steam to heat 700 homes or power a small cruise ship, a jumbo jet, two bullet trains or 5000 old Volkswagen Beetles.
• Two 2000 kW emergency generators round out the project.

Photography © Benjamin Benschneider