Eskenazi Health Project Earns LEED Gold Certification

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Eskenazi Health’s main campus in Indianapolis, Indiana, which includes the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital, has become one of the largest LEED Gold healthcare campuses in the world and the first in Indiana. Eskenazi Health partnered with a team led by HOK on the design of the campus, which includes six buildings and a parking garage on 37 acres.

The LEED Gold certification for the 1.3-million-square-foot campus encompasses several different building types, including an inpatient bed hospital, an ambulatory care center with a sky farm on the roof, an open-air outdoor plaza called “The Commonground,” faculty office building, pavilion restaurant, central utility plant and central boiler plant.

HOK served as the executive architect and sustainability consultant, with Platinum Earth, Blackburn Architects and Urban Design contributing to the LEED certification management. Syska Hennessey Group, Inc. served as executive engineer while RATIO Architects, Inc. was the architect of record and BSA LifeStructures served as engineer for the ambulatory care building. Context Design and Ninebark Landscaping, Inc. also joined HOK on the landscape architecture team. Wilhelm Construction served as general contractor on the parking structure.

Sustainable design innovations that helped the Eskenazi Health campus earn LEED Gold certification include:

• An extensive health education program for patients, staff and community members
• A 35,000-square-foot green roof, including a sky farm that grows 2,000 pounds of produce per year served in the hospital and in a campus restaurant
• An onsite farmer’s market
• Six healing gardens
• A rainwater harvesting system that supplies 100 percent of the campus’ irrigation needs
• Onsite stormwater treatment and infiltration systems that support the adjacent White River ecosystem, decreasing runoff by 40 percent compared to pre-project conditions
• Low-flow fixtures that reduce potable water use by 40 percent
• Recycling 80 percent of construction waste, with 48 percent of materials procured from regional suppliers
• A parking program for low-emitting and fuel-efficient vehicles and for those who choose to carpool to work

In addition, the hospital includes an art program that provides connections with nature and Eskenazi Health is collaborating with the city of Indianapolis to develop eroded and refuse-filled land into a future public park.

The Eskenazi Health campus, which opened in December 2013, includes a 315-inpatient bed hospital with 19 operating rooms and four interventional labs, 12 labor and delivery rooms, a 100-bed treatment room emergency department with a 16-bed clinical decision unit and more than 200 ambulatory clinical exam rooms. It is one of two adult Level I trauma centers in the state, and the only adult burn center serving Central and Southern Indiana. The hospital links functionally and operationally to the adjoining outpatient care center, which houses primary and specialty care.