On Tuesday, Nov. 29, the Orange County Board of Supervisors overwhelmingly authorized money for design and construction services for a $78 million campus for the Orange County Health Care Agency. The Irvine-based facility will allow HCA to establish a centralized location for important services. It is officially known as the El Toro Campus Project.
The $78 million Irvine complex will primarily address capacity demands for emergency medical services, lab testing, and medical storage from its current Santa Ana location. The new campus will be situated in Irvine, next to the Great Park, on Marine Way.
In an email to Irvine Weekly; Ellen Guevara, a public relations officer with HCA, mentioned that the renovation is anticipated to take around 18 months to complete and the construction works are expected to start by next summer.
For important public health sections, the facility will serve as a new home. As per Guevara, the campus will enable the centralization of our organization’s core divisions, allowing them to be in one place and collaborate. “The construction will take care of the facilities’ recognized needs for proximity, capacity, and improvements. Aiming to be substantially finished by December 2024, the proposed work is expected to start in the summer of 2023 at the location.
The government has disclosed that the Emergency Medical Services, which comprises administration, a pharmacy, and the Agency Operation Center, would move to Irvine.
In addition, the site will house a Communicable Disease and Control Division with Biosafety Level 3 containment capacity. Anthrax and Brucella are only two examples of extremely contagious, potentially fatal respiratory diseases that can be contained in a BSL-3 laboratory.
Guevara said the lack of space during the epidemic caused the agency to be overburdened, and he added that the extension will help solve the shortcomings that parts of the agency, including the Agency Operation Center, had by giving them a centralized place.
“During the pandemic, there was not enough room to accommodate all of HCA’s collaboration partners in the Agency Operations Center, and employees had to be stationed at different site locations,” she stated. The main purpose of the new HCA campus is to consolidate certain important departments that collaborate closely.
A two-story building with a floor area of around 68,000 square feet will be the El Toro Campus project. According to the listing, the Communicable Disease Control division is expected to be 22,000 square feet smaller than the Public Health Facility and BSL-3 lab, which together occupy 25,000 square feet.
Guevara stated that she expects visuals to be released to the public by the end of February when the project enters the schematic design phase.
