Cost to construct new NDSH could be $850 to $950 per square foot

JAMESTOWN — A probable budget for a new North Dakota State Hospital could be in the range of $850 to $950 a square foot in 2025, according to Frank Pitts, an architect and founding partner of Architecture+.

Pitts updated the North Dakota State Hospital Governing Board on a new facility during its meeting on Monday, Dec. 11. The governing board took no action on the item.

“We are a point now in the project where we have submitted a draft program for review and approval, a space program that describes every single piece of space in the project where we explored a variety of different ways of organizing the hospital as an entity where we looked at four or five different kinds of basic inpatient units, about six or seven ideas of how to organize a whole hospital, and are presenting a predesigned report that kind of has three fundamentally different ideas about how to organize a hospital,” Pitts said.

Pitts said his group looked at six different sites for a new State Hospital. He also added that the predesign process has been driven by stakeholders at the State Hospital.

Pitts said the space program determined about 280,000 square feet for a new State Hospital.

“All of this came out of long series conversations on these multiple-day visits to the site to talk about how is the hospital going to be operated, how is it going to be staffed, what kind of rooms do you need, how big do they need to be, how many people are going to be in those rooms,” he said.

He said the program was developed for 165 beds, including 125 inpatient beds.

“Most of the departments are within the range we might have expected,” he said, referring to the square footage for each department.

Pitts said Architecture+ has worked on more than 200 hospital projects in the U.S. He said the cost to build a public hospital ranges from $500 a square foot to more than $1,500 a square foot according to data on public hospital projects over the last 15 to 20 years.

“We are thinking that the probable budget is likely to be in the range of $850 to $950 a square foot and that there are some fairly good recent build examples that fall within that range so that seems to be a fairly good number for starting,” he said.

At $850 per square foot, the cost to build a new 280,000-square-foot State Hospital would be $238 million. At $950 per square foot, the cost to build a new 280,000-square-foot State Hospital would be $266 million.

The original cost estimate of $69 million in 2019 was only to replace the Lahaug building and keep the other services at their current locations. In 2021, a request was made to replace everything and build one larger building that includes hospital and residential services together, which had a rough cost estimate of $153 million.

The 2023 North Dakota Legislature provided funding for planning and design work for the construction of a new State Hospital, The Jamestown Sun reported in September. Early planning is currently underway with more detailed planning and cost estimates planned for 2024. The 2025 North Dakota Legislature will then review the plan and consider approval for the project.

JLG Architects, Architecture+ and the TEGRA Group have met with State Hospital staff to discuss the predesign of a new State Hospital in Jamestown. Staff from all departments at the State Hospital gave input on the type of services that are provided, various room size needs and location of and proximity of departments to each other, according to a report from Aaron Olson, superintendent of the State Hospital.

“Each step of the process moves closer to the design of (a) new hospital,” he wrote. “Work continues on the predesign and location of the new hospital site.”

Masaki Ova joined The Jamestown Sun in August 2021 as a reporter. He grew up on a farm near Pingree, N.D. He majored in communications at the University of Jamestown, N.D.