Avera announces $245M in building projects across two Sioux Falls campuses

Children services, digestive health offerings to expand

Avera Health plans to add a six-story women’s and children’s services building and three-story digestive health building on two campuses in Sioux Falls, totaling $245 million in new investment.

The package of projects represents the largest amount of building activity in Avera’s history.

“Women and children should not have to go to the Twin Cities, they should not have to go to Omaha, they should not have to go to other points east of here,” Avera president and CEO Jim Dover said. “We are proud they will receive care on par with the best universities.”

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The tower for women’s and children’s hospital services will create a new main entrance on the campus of Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center.

“When our current front door was built, it was the front of the hospital. And now with the expansion of all the buildings around it, our front door is now in the middle of our living room. It’s in the middle of campus,” said Dr. Ron Place, regional president and CEO of Avera McKennan.

“This entrance of women’s and children’s will be the new entrance to the hospital, so facing out to Cliff (Avenue), the largest feeder street to the hospital, and it will look like a main entrance.”

A conceptual rendering of the lobby

A new lobby will create a central entry point and veer off toward the women and children’s tower on one side while connecting with the rest of the hospital. Shell space at the lobby level is being reserved for future education, conference and administrative uses.

A conceptual rendering of the lobby

While Avera looked at multiple locations to expand its women’s and children’s services, this one became the preferred site because of how it ties into the existing critical care services on the main campus. Building the 220,000-square-foot tower will involve demolishing Plaza 3, which is among “the oldest and smallest buildings we have,” Place said. The building was developed for cancer care around 1990 and is not able to be retrofitted, he said. Replacing it also preserves nearly all parking on the campus despite adding the new tower.

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