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Mayo Clinic Hospital: Out Come the Hard Hats

A rendering shows the lobby in Mayo Clinic Hospital — complete with a colorful glass chandelier by Seattle artist Dale Chihuly.

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After four years of legal challenges, Mayo Clinic is starting to build a new hospital on the clinic campus. At a closing set for early July, Mayo Clinic will complete the sale of St. Luke's Hospital to St. Vincent's Health System in Jacksonville, which will take legal title of the property and lease it back to Mayo. Mayo Clinic patients who need hospitalization will continue to be admitted to St. Luke's until the new hospital is built. An official groundbreaking is scheduled for mid-November, although site preparation is already under way.

"We're delighted to proceed in earnest on the long-envisioned Mayo Clinic Hospital at our San Pablo Road campus," says Dr. George Bartley, chair of the Jacksonville clinic's Board of Governors.

Engineering and design documents for the $226.6 million, 214-bed teaching and research hospital are complete. Mayo Clinic's development campaign exceeded its target of raising $70 million to help fund the construction of the hospital, which will be built above and behind the Mayo Building on the San Pablo Road campus. The plans were first announced in 2001, but legal challenges delayed the project.

Construction is expected to take about three years. When Mayo moves into its new hospital, there will be a final closing, and St. Vincent's will operate St. Luke's.

"When Mayo Clinic Hospital opens in 2008," says Bartley, "patients coming to Mayo for complex medical care will be treated at a single location with integrated inpatient and outpatient services. Having our hospital, clinic, laboratory, research and education facilities on one campus improves patient care and efficiency and helps reduce costs."