St. Luke’s starts work on Children’s Pavilion

Construction that is expected to last for years at St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center in downtown Boise starts the first weekend of September.

Between Sept. 2 and Sept. 8, fencing will be installed around the former Treasure Valley Pediatrics office at Avenue B and Jefferson Street on the site where St. Luke’s will build its Children’s Pavilion office building for pediatricians, said Jeff Hull, St. Luke’s senior director of architecture and construction.

Reclaimed Structures acquired the one-story 1988 office building from St. Luke’s and will remove it during the rest of September and reassemble the building in Meridian, said Anita Kissée, St. Luke’s public relations manager.

Once the structure is cleared away, St. Luke’s excavation and shoring crew in early October will start digging the 35-foot hole for the three-level underground parking garage. The full excavation is expected to take 10 months, Hull said.

The four-story, 100,000-square-foot Children’s Pavilion is supposed to start coming out of the ground late next summer, with a projected opening date 18 months later in the winter of 2018, Hull said.

An elevated passage will link the Children’s Pavilion with the St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital across Jefferson Street.

The $40 million Children’s Pavilion is designed to consolidate St. Luke’s pediatric specialists across the Treasure Valley in one location, Kissée said.

The Children’s Pavilion pre-dates the St. Luke’s master plan. That plan calls for the closure of Jefferson Street from Avenue B to First Street to allow for growth that stretches 30 years into the future and includes a 680,000-square-foot expansion of the hospital to the north. This first phase of that project is expected to start next summer with road, bicycle and pedestrian improvements on the perimeter streets, Hull said.