Dallas will soon get a $5 billion children’s hospital as demand for pediatric care in North Texas balloons alongside the region’s growing population.
Children’s Health and the UT Southwestern Medical Center will replace Children’s Medical Center Dallas with a brand new facility on nearly 34 acres in the Southwestern Medical District. The 2 million-square-foot hospital will include two 12-story towers and an eight-story tower located on the corner of Harry Hines Boulevard and Mockingbird Lane, about a mile and a half away from the current campus.
The children’s hospital will include 552 beds, a 38% increase from the current medical center, with space for future expansion. The only Level I pediatric trauma center in the region will include 90 emergency room pods and 24 observation rooms, while a new outpatient clinic will add 96 exam rooms to the 344 that will continue to operate at the existing Specialty Center Dallas on Stemmons.
In total, the 4.5 million-square-foot campus will be larger than AT&T Stadium and as long as nearly six Boeing 737 planes end to end, while the hospital will stand taller than the Statue of Liberty
“We’re able to serve all the kids and families who come through our front door today,” said Children’s Health president and CEO Chris Durovich. “But obviously with those kinds of growth rates, we’re beginning to press the outside of the envelope, being able to fulfill that piece of our mission to make life better for children.”
Not-for-profit Children’s and UT Southwestern will break ground on the new facility, located on land that formerly housed the Bass Center buildings, in the second half of this year. The hospital is expected to open in the next six to seven years.
The project is a massive undertaking five years in the making that was originally reported to be half the cost of the current plan. Children’s and UT Southwestern reaffirmed their master agreement in 2019 and have been continuously expanding their presence in the region.
The current Children’s Medical Center Dallas, which opened in 1967, is closing in on the end of its prime, said UT Southwestern president Dr. Daniel Podolsky.
“It was clear to everybody… that the very best care would not only require that coordination and bringing to bear the very best medical knowledge and everything that goes into patient care, but also facilities that would match that,” Podolsky said.
Children’s and UT Southwestern have not yet decided what will happen to the current hospital, which will remain in operation until the new campus opens.
The new emergency department space will increase capacity by 15%, an addition that’s sorely needed as children adjust to respiratory virus seasons post-COVID. CMC Dallas saw a 20% increase in flu cases the week of Jan. 28 compared to the week prior, marking the highest number of flu patients they’ve treated since 2022.
The partnership between UT Southwestern and Children’s spans more than 60 years, with the academic medical center providing most doctors for CMC Dallas. Their new hospital will be the exclamation point on years of prolific growth.
Dallas-Fort Worth is projected to hit 8.5 million people by 2028, according to a study by Site Selection Group. Currently, the pediatric population is nearing 2.5 million, a number that’s expected to double by 2050, Children’s reports.
Children’s expanded north 15 years ago with the construction of its Plano medical campus. The pediatric health system broke ground on a major expansion of the hospital in 2021, adding a 395,000-square-foot, eight-floor tower and nearly tripling bed capacity.
Even farther north in Prosper, Children’s opened a new, three-story specialty center in early 2023, joining a group of other hospitals and outpatient facilities staking claim in the booming North Texas town. Fort Worth-based Cook Children’s opened its own hospital there in 2022.
In 2025, Children’s will occupy the second floor of the 150,000-square-foot UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird.
Hospital and outpatient construction start volumes are generally down compared to pre-pandemic. Construction started on 17.2 million square feet of inpatient space in 2023, down from 22.5 million square feet in 2018, according to medical real estate data firm Revista.
Nationwide, Texas ranked first in hospital construction in 2023, with 35 properties and 8.7 million square feet in progress. Out of the nation’s top cities, Dallas ranked sixth for hospital construction in progress by square feet, just behind Houston. Indianapolis, which is building a new IU Health hospital, ranked first, according to a Revista report.
“It’s more expensive to build anything nowadays than it was two or three years ago. And that’s because of inflation of materials like steel and concrete,” said Mike Hargrave, principal at Revista. “The other culprit is the rise in interest rates.”
Funding for the project will come from a mix of hospital revenues, interest from investments, debt and community support that includes philanthropic donations. The hospital, which the UT Board of Regents approved late last year, will not draw from public funds, Durovich said.
The new Dallas campus will include a physical representation of Children’s and UT Southwestern’s partnership: A connector bridge between the pediatric hospital and William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital so that babies born at Clements have immediate access to the Children’s Level IV neonatal intensive care unit and cardiovascular intensive care unit. The campus will also feature a new fetal care center.
Building a hospital from scratch requires planning for current medical standards while trying to estimate what future advances could come in the 50- to 60-year lifespan of a medical building. The spaces above the ceilings in the current Children’s Medical Center Dallas, for instance, are only eight inches in some spaces, too short for the number of electrical wires that now need to run above each room.
“There are kids living today five, ten years longer with some of those chronic illnesses that a decade ago unfortunately wouldn’t,” said Children’s Health Chief Strategy Officer Lindsey Tyra. “That does create a different set of needs caring for those complex patients and new ways of caring for them that we believe will continue with the medical breakthroughs that we’re seeing.”
In determining what to include — and what not to include — in the new campus, Tyra and her team initiated a listening tour of patient families and medical providers. They found that space close to patient rooms for parents and family members and even Children’s staff to take time to themselves was critical.
“If you’re a caregiver, you want to be strong, you want to be positive, you want to be uplifting, but you’re scared. You don’t want to let them know that,” Tyra said. “So we’re putting a design in place in this new facility that allows a caregiver, allows the family, allows a parent to be able to step outside of that room where their child is being cared for and have that deep breath moment.”
Green space plays a prominent role in the campus to allow patients and families to step out of a hospital environment.
The new facility has two helicopter pads to reduce the transfer time of patients. It will also include space dedicated to coordinating research studies, which are conducted through the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern.
