Jim Shmerling, president and CEO of 325-bed Children's Hospital Colorado, says he looks out his office window and sees four large cranes working on the three major building projects going on at the 227-acre Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora just outside of Denver: the expansion of his own institution, expansion of the 437-bed University of Colorado Hospital and construction of the new 1.1 million-square-foot, $800 million Veterans Affairs Department hospital.
“It's synergistic,” Shmerling says. “The success of one is helping the success of the others.”
Children's Hospital opened in September 2007 and is in the middle of a $230 million expansion project. The new East Tower will have 124 beds and three floors of empty shell space for future growth, so—when it opens late next year—it will increase the hospital's footprint to some 1.8 million square feet.