Exclusive: Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital announces $62 million expansion of its St. Pete campus
/A rendering of the future 28,000-square-foot outpatient and inpatient surgical center that will expand john hopkins’ emergency and imaging services | JHAC
Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, which was recently ranked the #1 children’s hospital in Florida, will expand its downtown St. Petersburg campus to further its surgical capabilities to treat complex cases and enhance services.
The hospital has submitted permits to start work on a $62 million project to expand its Emergency Center and its second-floor surgical suite.
The 28,000-square-foot expansion will rise on the northwest corner of the existing emergency center and will extend into the current parking lot at the corner of 5th Avenue South and 6th Street South.
The project will add six convertible exam rooms to the Emergency Center while a second-floor expansion will include four new operating suites designed to accommodate complex neurosurgery, orthopedics, airway, and other multidisciplinary surgical operations. The operating suites will be among the hospital’s largest.
An image of the current Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital campus as it exists today | JHAC
“We are working hard as a hospital system to have destination medical programs as we are seeing patients with higher acuity cases traveling to us from out of state. Additionally, our local community is continuing to grow,” Justin Olsen, the COO at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, said to St. Pete Rising.
The 259-bed pediatric hospital, which also serves as a teaching hospital with residency programs, has held high rankings throughout the years in multiple specialties by U.S. News & World Report, including neurology and neurosurgery, diabetes and endocrinology, nephrology, cancer, neonatology, urology, pulmonology, lung surgery, and orthopedics.
“We conducted a master facility plan about two years ago and looked at our current utilization and capacity and identified how we need to increase the number of our operating rooms to support patients over the next 10 years,” Olsen said.
A map of the area of the expansion | St. Pete Rising
The Emergency Center has two MRI systems and a third is located outside in a trailer. The expansion will allow that MRI system to be relocated to the new expanded center.
“Many of our patients who can't stand still for MRI scans need to be sedated and this will be a better facility to accommodate that,” Olsen said.
The development team for the new inpatient and outpatient surgical emergency center includes California-based general contracting firm DPR Construction, which has a Tampa outpost; Texas-based HKS Architects Inc.; and North Carolina-based Kimley-Horn, which is serving as the civil and landscape architect.
The hospital is permitting the project in phases and the building’s design is roughly 80% complete.
Construction is expected to kick off in spring 2025 and wrap up in the third quarter of 2026.
An image of the Research Education Building at Johns Hopkins All Children's | JHAC
Construction will not interrupt hospital operations and parking will be accessible throughout the construction period.
The development will be funded by Johns Hopkins, donations, and cash on hand, Olsen said.
The Emergency Center expansion will be the hospital’s largest expansion since the opening of its Research and Education Building in 2018.
The 230,000-square-foot research and education building houses the hospital’s institutes, grant-funded scientists, innovative graduate medical education programs, cutting-edge Center for Medical Simulation and Innovative Education, and Florida’s only accredited pediatric biorepository.
Outside of St. Petersburg, Johns Hopkins has several other projects in the works.
Earlier this year, the hospital system purchased 114 acres in Pasco County for $24 million. Plans for the property are sparse, but Johns Hopkins hopes to establish a new pediatric care campus site located off of Interstate I-75 and Overpass Road.
