The University of Alabama at Birmingham continues to implement its strategic plan and campus master plan by building new facilities and renovating existing spaces to enhance opportunities for success across UAB’s mission pillars of education, research innovation and economic development, community service and patient care.
UAB’s Campus Master Plan and new strategic plan, Forging Ahead, support the institution’s strategic growth, including the physical evolution of the campus, exemplified in 12 current projects. Several of these projects also directly support UAB’s Research Strategic Initiative: Growth with Purpose, an institutionwide effort to aggressively expand UAB’s research portfolio and multiply the positive impact on people’s lives.
Ongoing healthcare projects included in the plan are:
The Cooper Green Mercy Health Services Authority, a UAB Health System affiliate, broke ground on a new outpatient clinic just west of the original 1970s Cooper Green facility in January 2023 to house expanding clinical operations better suited to efficient delivery of modern ambulatory healthcare. The new five-story, 211,000-square-foot building, with an estimated cost of $120 million, is under construction on the site of the former Cooper Green parking deck. The facility will feature urgent care, pharmacy, imaging, employee services, administrative offices, a conference center, laboratory facilities and outpatient physical therapy space. The facility will offer main clinical services including primary care, specialty care, ophthalmology, behavioral health, an oncology clinic and expanded dental care. Cooper Green Mercy Health will continue to provide clinical services in the existing building until the new building opens.
UAB broke ground on its replacement inpatient rehabilitation facility in 2022. The new facility is directly adjacent to the existing Spain Rehabilitation Center.
The building has three floors dedicated to specialty units of rehabilitation therapy. Each of these floors will provide 26 inpatient beds with technology designed to provide comprehensive rehabilitation care for patients. The building will focus on neurorehabilitation for patients following stroke, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury. In addition, there will be two floors of acute care beds. A 30-bed general acute care unit is located on the fifth floor, and on the seventh floor is a 28-bed inpatient floor dedicated to a seizure monitoring unit that offers clinical, research and education services to patients with epilepsy. The total count of inpatient beds for this new building is 136. The 11-story concrete structure has topped out, and the exterior envelope cladding is being applied. Construction is projected to be complete in the first quarter of 2025, with occupancy taking place in spring 2025.
The UAB Hospital is also expanding the university emergency department. Temporary expansion renovations, which began in June 2023, have temporarily relocated the waiting area and offer nine new exam spaces. Two ED modular units that contain eight exam spaces each are operational, improving wait times and allowing new operational models to be implemented.
The long-term plans for the $73 million expansion of UED includes renovations to the first floor of UAB Hospital’s North Pavilion, turning the adjacent atrium into clinical care space and the construction of a new three-story space in the drop-off drive of North Pavilion. With 66,030 new square feet of new construction, the project will provide 59 new exam rooms and additional imaging capacity for emergency clinical care. Design of the expansion is continuing, and the project will bid later in the year.
