A little more than five miles west of the campus is Citadel Mall,
where a shuttered JCPenney had fallen victim to Amazon and rising
real estate costs. The mall's developer offered to cover half of the $32
million renovation costs if MUSC leased the 126,000-square-foot space
for $2 million per year.
Sold.
MUSC signed the deal in late 2017 and began transforming the space
into a large diagnostic imaging center, multidisciplinary physician clin-
ics, a muscular skeletal institute and a surgery center with two ORs
and two procedure rooms. The renovation was completed on
Thanksgiving Day 2019 and the West Ashley Medical Pavilion opened
its doors to patients on Dec. 30.
"I gave our team a little over four weeks to operationalize a building
of that size and magnitude," says Mr. Crawford. "And they did it. It
took a lot of long nights and working almost every weekend, but we
achieved a seamless opening in a little over a month."
The project highlights several themes you'll notice throughout this
issue, our annual look at how to reinvent existing spaces or lay foun-
dations for successful new builds: creative thinking, planning for
future growth and innovation, and smart designs that emphasize
patient-centered care and staff satisfaction. For example:
• Creative designs. The box-shaped shell of the former JCPenney
served as an ideal blank canvas in which architects and interior
designers retrofitted patient care areas off a straight-line corridor that
runs down the center of the space. The hallway is roughly 100 yards
long, so the designers included football yardage markers to help
patients navigate the space. Looking for the surgery center? Head
down to the 25-yard line and cut left.
A pair of escalators in the center of the store filled a large atrium
under a massive skylight. The escalators were removed, but the sky-
F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 0 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 5
