If you’ve been near Cook Children’s Medical Center – Fort Worth’s campus for the last few months, you know that the pediatric health system is busy building. The lane closures, orange traffic cones and metal cranes stretching above the blue peaks are signs of expansion.
While growth is exciting, Cook Children’s know it brings challenges that can impact team members, visitors, neighbors and our community. Cook Children’s want to share the ‘what and why’ about the work the health care system is doing to continue to serve children and families.
Growing with the Community
Fort Worth, the greater DFW metro area and the surrounding regions that rely on Cook Children’s for specialty pediatric care are growing. Cook Children’s is prepared to grow with them.
“North Texas is expanding rapidly, and we’re here to match that expansion,” said Spencer Seals, senior vice president of Real Estate, Construction, and Facilities Planning for Cook Children’s Health Care System. “Through the West Tower and other construction projects, we are building future capacity.”
With population growth comes increased demand for Cook Children’s services. For example, as the largest Level IV NICU in North Texas, Cook Children’s cares for critically ill babies from hospitals both nearby and hundreds of miles away.
Cook Children’s also has one of the busiest emergency rooms in the nation, treating broken bones, severely ill children and patients transported by plane, helicopter and ambulance in need of lifesaving care. It’s not uncommon to see 500 to 600 patients in a single day during the peak season, with many requiring admission to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).
As a result, beds in the PICU and NICU are frequently full, and children and families must wait for beds. To make sure Cook Children’s can be here for every child, the health care system created a 10-year plan designed to expand the campus and meet the needs of patients and families for decades to come.
Progress and Milestones
So far this year, Cook Children’s has made progress or completed numerous projects.
Kids’ Place
To make room for the West Tower expansion, the Kids’ Place Child Development Center – a daycare center for Cook Children’s staff – relocated from Southland Avenue to a new facility on Cook Children’s Fort Worth campus along 9th Avenue between Cooper and Pruitt streets.
West Tower Infrastructure Takes Shape
Several foundational phases of the West Tower project are now complete.
Phase 1 of excavation, including installation of two tower cranes and construction of the basement structure, has been completed. The former Alliance for Children building has been demolished, and construction of the West Tower Garage is underway.
Meanwhile, crews continue expanding the South Utility Plant, which provides electrical power across the campus. As part of that work, teams excavated a major utility tunnel beneath 7th Avenue.
Building the Foundation
Much of the construction visible today is creating the infrastructure necessary to support the future West Tower.
The 10-story, 760,000-square-foot tower will house a new PICU, an expanded Heart Center and a Transitional Care Unit. It will also create opportunities to expand the NICU and Emergency Department within the existing hospital.
Many of the lane closures along 8th Avenue, Rosedale Street and throughout the Medical District have been necessary to relocate and upgrade utilities that support the future building. This work includes:
Sewer lines
Storm drains
Internet access
Irrigation
Water flow
Fire water
Teams are also relocating gas lines and Oncor power lines.
Cook Children’s hopes to wrap up the 8th road work by November.
After that, all West Tower construction should be contained to the Cook Children’s Fort Worth campus. There will still be construction on Rosedale, but that work is being done by the city on behalf of the entire Medical District.
As construction continues, Cook Children’s construction website is the best place to find up-to-date information of lane, road and sidewalk closures.
Seals explained that his team and their partners have done everything they can to mitigate the impact the construction has on the community, staff, and patients. For example, Cook Children’s avoided road closures on 7th Avenue, where utility work needed to be done, by having crews tunneling beneath the street.
Still, Seals knows the lane closures and traffic can be a challenge. However, if Cook Children’s is going to grow with the community, the utility work was always a necessary growing pain.
“In order to meet the needs of the Cook Children’s system, we had to do this infrastructure work with or without the West Tower,” Seals explained. “And in order to expand the NICU, PICU and the Heart Center, we needed to add the tower. There is literally not enough room to do that without the West Tower addition.”
What to Expect Next
Before utilities can be connected to the West Tower, crews must lower portions of Terrell Avenue and 7th Avenue. This work will create the proper grade needed to manage stormwater around the future building. Terrell Avenue is expected to reopen to both pedestrian and vehicle traffic by summer 2027.
Over the next six months, Cook Children’s expects to reach several additional milestones, including:
Completion of utility work along 8th Avenue
Continued construction of new parking garages
Installation of three additional tower cranes
Completion of the first of five major phases of West Tower construction
Advancement of the second phase of basement construction
Looking Ahead
By late 2030, Cook Children’s will have added more than 200 beds in the West Tower, renovated parts of the hospital and built in extra space to prepare for future growth.
The West Tower reflects Cook Children’s growth – from 56 private rooms in the PICU to a state-of-the-art Heart Center, with everything a patient needs from surgery to discharge in contiguous space to more beds and spaces for families to heal.
With the space vacated in the existing hospital, Cook Children’s is undertaking a 155,000 square-foot renovation, including more cancer services, highly specialized interventional radiology and the addition of 37 NICU beds to bring the total to nearly 150 beds.
For more than a century, Cook Children’s has risen to meet the needs of the moment – the health care system has expanded its campus, evolved its technology and added services to improve the health and well-being of all children in its care. This expansion is a continuation of the system’s Promise, “Everything for the child.”
Cook Children’s appreciates your patience. You can read more about the expansion in this story, which is updated with the latest construction impacts.
RELATED STORIES
Let the Sunshine In: Cook Children’s Advances Legacy of Healing and Hope with New Patient Tower
Cook Children’s Unveils Plan to Expand Critical Care to Meet Community Demand
Cook Children’s Looks to Expand Medical Campus to Keep Up with Unprecedented Growth in Fort Worth
‘;