TORRANCE >> About $10 million under budget and six months ahead of schedule, Torrance Memorial Medical Center’s $480 million seven-story tower opens to the public Friday and Saturday for tours and speeches.
Medical staff won’t move to the new tower overlooking Lomita Boulevard until Nov. 16, once the state-of-the-art, 256-bed hospital is fully stocked and staffed and patients literally roll in from the existing hospital wing.
But Saturday’s grand opening for the 390,000-square-foot tower will include nurses in vintage uniforms and appearances by actors playing hospital founders Jared Sydney and Helena Torrance.
It’s the biggest event for Torrance Memorial since 1971, when the hospital moved from the Old Torrance site where it was founded in 1925, financed by $100,000 bequeathed by the city’s founder in his will.
In comparison, the new addition, dubbed the Melanie and Richard Lundquist Tower, has received $130 million in donations. It’s named after the Palos Verdes Estates philanthropists who contributed $50 million to the project and have donated about $70 million to the hospital overall through the years.
“It’s going to be a tremendous community asset,” said President and CEO Craig Leach. “We told (the architects) we wanted something unique and special for this community. I think they achieved that.”
He added, “We had originally targeted around $50 million to $75 million (in donations) from the community in cash and pledges. Here we are six years later and we are now at $130 million in giving for this building.”
Although Torrance Memorial already is the largest acute-care hospital in the South Bay, the new tower will increase the total number of beds to 446. That’s a net gain of about 50 after about 200 are closed in the older seven-story Central Tower, which will be emptied from the fourth floor up once the new facility opens, Leach said.
The lower floors will be used for outpatient services, but officials are still deciding how to use the upper floors.
The old tower was built in the late 1960s and is no longer seismically compliant with state laws, prompting the construction of the Melanie and Richard Lundquist Tower.
The facility was built to withstand the largest earthquake geologists say the South Bay could face — a magnitude of 7.4, Leach said. About one-third of patient rooms have a visible brace designed to absorb a jolt from an earthquake.
The tower faces a 16-acre site across Lomita Boulevard that decades from now will house an expansion of the hospital, but until then will serve as staff parking.
A water feature built with a $1 million Toyota donation greets patients at the front door of the tower, which was built to evoke a feeling of hospitality rather than a clinical atmosphere, Leach said.
The tower’s ground floor is light and airy with an expansive lobby, gift shop and 200-seat cafe and patio with a decor of light pastel colors.
Sixteen original art installations, many with South Bay themes, are scattered throughout the tower.
“When you walk in, we wanted to make sure that, first of all, it’s beautiful,” Leach said. “Second of all, that it felt warm and welcoming. Third of all, that you knew where you were. It was important to us when you walked through those front doors that you could see all the way through (the building) so you would be oriented to where you are.”
The second floor boasts the tower’s most intensive uses, with a dozen new operating rooms, including the South Bay’s first hybrid operating room, which allows surgeons to perform high-risk, minimally invasive surgeries and then switch to more conventional open surgery if needed, an adaptive approach designed to accommodate the medical needs of an aging population.
The hybrid operating room offers such advantages as a zero-gravity radiation protection system, said Dr. Amir Kaviani, a vascular surgeon.
That piece of equipment will protect the surgeon from radiation used during medical procedures without donning a 40- to 50-pound lead apron, he said. The device, which literally suspends the heavy protective clothing above the operating table, saves time and aids mobility and stamina, Kaviani said.
The remainder of the tower is devoted to patient rooms, including 48 intensive care units.
Expansive windows that allow light to flood in is a constant theme throughout the building, said Connie Senner, director of construction.
Patient rooms, waiting rooms and pre- and post-operation areas are built out to exterior walls to take advantage of the light and views.
The new private rooms — patients share rooms in the old part of the hospital, which is not optimal for patient privacy or infectious disease control — are 30 percent larger than existing rooms.
The hospital installed an interactive system that provides patients with health education videos or movies on demand on 40-inch HD televisions. Eventually, patients will be able to order meals akin to room service in a hotel, request housekeeping services and buy gift shop items.
Rooms also have sleeper sofas for friends and family and a “tablet arm” for charging mobile devices.
“We’re really promoting a family-centered care structure and having folks stay overnight is a big part of that,” Senner said.
The construction was not without its fiscal challenges, starting as the world’s financial markets suffered a catastrophic meltdown.
On one hand, it enabled Torrance Memorial to save about $30 million on construction costs, Leach said.
But the monetary outlay required also prompted bond-rating service Moody’s to downgrade the hospital last November.
That came on the heels of declining patient volumes since the outset of the recession and a significant decline in cash flow earlier in 2013, Moody’s said.
Leach said that’s a reflection of nationwide trends from the past six years.
More unemployment meant fewer people with medical insurance, while advances in medical technology and more restrictive policies from insurance companies have reduced in-patient stays, affecting profitability, he said.
“In the country there are 11 million fewer patient days today than there were in 2008,” Leach said. “We knew going in this (project) was a big (financial) stretch.”
The hospital currently operates at 75 percent occupancy.
Still, during the same period, the hospital also increased its share of the local market by 2 percentage points to almost 26 percent, Leach said.
There are perks for donors who contribute more than $150,000,
For their hospital stays, donors have first dibs on five “patron rooms” that are larger than regular rooms.
Richard and Melanie Lundquist said they were impressed with the final product.
“We applaud all of the people who participated in bringing this extremely complicated development project to fruition, both ahead of schedule and below budget,” Richard Lundquist said.
“For many generations to come, this beautifully designed new medical complex, along with all those working in it, will provide advanced medical care for the entire community.”
