May 6, 2021

$60M Spokane medical building tops out for UW/Gonzaga venture

Photo courtesy of Gonzaga University [enlarge]

The building is going up near McKinstry’s SIERR Building and the Spokane River.

The University of Washington School of Medicine-Gonzaga University Health Partnership this week helped top out a $60 million medical building at 840 E. Spokane Falls Blvd. in Spokane. When finished in July 2022, most of the 90,000-square-foot building will be the new home for the partnership's medical and health education, research and innovation center.

Bouten Construction Co., the project's general contractor, and members of Iron Workers Local 14 raised the final 12-foot beam into place, which was adorned with UW and GU flags, a small evergreen tree and over 250 signatures from team members, university staff, students and others. The project is using about 780 tons of structural steel and about 60 construction and 350 craft workers.

The four-story building will have classrooms, an anatomy suite, research labs and administrative offices. These spaces will be used by 120 first- and second-year UW medical students, faculty, staff and more than 500 undergraduate students from Gonzaga's health sciences programs.

The universities have signed long-term leases to occupy a combined nearly 60,000 square feet of space. The top floor is available for lease by public- and private-sector tenants.

The project is a public-private partnership, with Emerald Initiative managing and overseeing construction of the building, and providing asset and property management once it is complete. Emerald is an affiliate of McKinstry, the design-build contractor on the project. CollinsWoerman of Seattle is the architect.

The project site is adjacent to McKinstry's Spokane Inland Empire Railroad building and Gonzaga's Trent Avenue parking facility. The new facility is designed to connect programs and move people between the two buildings, which will provide a combined 145,000 square feet of space for health education and innovation. The schools envision the two buildings as a hub to attract private-sector medical and health research to collaborate with the academic programs.