Baptist Health broke ground Thursday morning on a new nine-story building that will be an expansion of the existing Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center which opened last October on San Marco Boulevard at Gary Street.
The new 330,000-square-foot building, expected to open by mid-2018, will be a destination cancer center for the region, providing individualized, comprehensive and advanced cancer care to adult patients and their families.
Baptist's CEO Hugh Greene believes that it's a transformative moment.
"It changes things as far as cancer care for our region and also the impact of patients and their families. It's going to be a beautiful iconic building, but more importantly, it's what's going to take place in that building," Greene said.
The new building will be constructed on a two-block tract of land adjacent to the current.100,000-square-foot cancer center across the street. A sky bridge will connect the current building to the new cancer center.
Jacksonville Councilwoman Lori Boyer was at the groundbreaking and said the community has been very vocal about the design.
"There were a lot of concerns about not making San Marco Boulevard an urban canyon, but they did an extraordinary job of locating a tower back from the road and providing an enhanced openings at the corner and the intersections, the pavilion spaces, so it's still pedestrian-friendly," Boyer said.
Patient Brandy Eger had her last chemotherapy therapy treatment for breast cancer in April. She said she picked Baptist because of the connection that she felt immediately with her doctor.
"(There was) something about him. He was really an amazing doctor, but he was a person. He spent as much time as we needed. He drew pictures, printed documents out for us to try to explain, everything," Eger said.
Eger was a patient before the partnership, but said she knew about MD Anderson's reputation as a top cancer center. Part of that reputation was earned not just because of the doctors, access to clinical trials, and a proven collaborative treatment model but for the huge medical complex that's iconic in Houston at the main cancer center. Baptist is duplicating that design. There will be lots of open space indoors and outdoors, natural light and art. It's an environment that feels less like a hospital and more like a place for healing."
"You spend a lot of time in doctors' offices and clinics, and you need a little something to bring you up. If everything is so sterile and everyone is so rigid, it just doesn't give you the nurturing feeling that you need, so I think this will be great," Eger said.