Plaza West Tower at Barnes-Jewish Hospital Celebrates Grand Opening

McCarthy Building Companies recently completed construction and celebrated the official opening of the new Plaza West Tower, an expansion of heart and vascular patient care, as well as radiology, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in Missouri. The 16-story, 660,000-square-foot Plaza West Tower is designed to enhance the experience for patients and their families under the expert care of WashU Medicine physicians and Barnes-Jewish Hospital clinical teams.

With 224 private inpatient rooms and 56 private intensive care unit rooms, advanced imaging and the latest in surgical preparation and recovery, the tower provides modern clinical spaces and reinforces the region’s reputation as a hub for healthcare.

The Design-Build Project, delivered by McCarthy in collaboration with CannonDesign and BJC HealthCare, was one of the largest Design-Build healthcare projects in the Midwest. Additional groups included BR+A Consulting Engineers, Thornton Tomasetti as structural engineer and Castle Contracting as civil engineer.

Design and preconstruction began in December 2019, with construction officially starting in November 2021. Throughout the process, the project team navigated a series of unusual challenges that underscored the complexity of building a hospital expansion within a dense, active, multi-building urban campus.

From installing a chilled water loop that connected the new tower to the existing campus system by routing it over a neighboring building, to demolishing an 11-foot-wide pedestrian bridge that required closing a major road for a weekend, every step demanded precise coordination and innovative problem-solving.

To meet the hospital’s need for efficiency, quality and minimal disruption, the team implemented a prefabrication strategy, including 280 patient room bathrooms built by T.J. Wies Contracting. Fully finished bathroom pods were manufactured offsite and delivered ready to install. Each pod included plumbing, electrical, tile, fixtures and finishes, all constructed under controlled factory conditions to ensure precision and consistency. Once delivered, the pods were lifted by cranes into place floor by floor. This approach shortened installation schedules, minimized on-site congestion and provided superior quality assurance compared to traditional field-built methods.

Plaza West Tower was built on one of the busiest corners of the Washington University Medical Campus, with no adjacent laydown or staging area. Instead, the team managed construction operations from a small site located across a major roadway from the tower. This required careful sequencing of deliveries and tight coordination of pedestrian and traffic flow. Every activity was meticulously planned to ensure uninterrupted hospital access, safeguard patients and staff and keep the project progressing safely and efficiently.

More than 3,700 architects, engineers, project managers, skilled trades men and women, apprentices and interns were engaged in the construction of the tower, providing significant economic impact to the region in addition to the clinical and patient benefits.