View the original story on the Dallas Business Journal website here.
 

With the new Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children campus just weeks away from opening its doors in Frisco, final touches are being made to the 345,000-square-foot sports medicine facility.

The Scottish Rite for Children Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center, a five-story ambulatory surgery center with outpatient clinics and walk-in availability, will start accepting patients in October.

The new campus was built to serve North Texas’ growing community and meet the needs of 25 percent of the pediatric hospital’s patients who live in cities north of Dallas, said Jeremy Howell, vice president of Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children.

Howell said pediatric sports medicine is one of the fastest growing sub-specialties in orthopedics, and the new building, which is anchored by the Center for Excellence in Sports Medicine, will be outfitted with the latest technology that can offer preventative care and conduct valuable research for young athletes.

“We want to be able to come alongside these kids and help them out and hopefully prevent injury,” he said. “But if it happens, we want them to know they’ll be taken care of by the best orthopedic surgeons.”

The facility, which sits on a 40-acre swath of land at the Dallas North Tollway and Lebanon Road near the newly opened Baylor Scott & White Sports Therapy & Research center at The Star, has an outdoor sprint track and a soccer field for patient rehabilitation and research. It also has conference rooms, a walking trail and a playground, all of which will be open for community use.

“It was important for us to give back to the community that has given so much to us,” added Howell.

Dallas-based HKS Inc. is the architect behind the sprawling campus and The Beck Group is the general contractor.

The project’s lead architect, Rachel Knox, said her team met with Scottish Rite staff to get a sense of patients’ emotional needs and how the building’s design could help address them.

“A big driver of the design of this space was to bring in natural light into the patients rooms,” said Knox.

The design also accounted for larger waiting rooms that can comfortably accommodate patients’ families and offer them a little privacy, she added.

One waiting room, the result of a partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities, features an electric fireplace and a play area, making it feel more like a living room than a waiting room.

Knox said a lot of thought went into how to bring the brand of the 96-year-old Dallas hospital to a new building. The signature crayon colors of the Dallas campus were a must, she said. Vibrant primary colors are threaded throughout the new building, from the art to the color-coded floors to a rainbow spiral staircase in the lobby.

“We don’t want it to feel, smell or look like a hospital,” said Howell.

As North Texas continues to grow, the campus is prepared to grow with it. An additional floor and a half of available shell space is spread throughout the building, including four more operating rooms. And it will likely be needed, Howell said. The campus is anticipating 22,000 clinical visits and 13,000 physical therapy visits in its first year.