McCarthy Tops Out Ambulatory Care Center

Medical center project scheduled for October 2013 completion date

LOS ANGELES, Calif., (June 27, 2012) – McCarthy Building Companies recently topped out structural steel on the new $150 million Martin Luther King, Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center in Los Angeles. Over the last seven weeks, steel workers installed 1,500 pieces (1,000-tons) of structural steel to create the frame for the new facility. 

A topping out ceremony was held on June 20, 2012 to mark the project milestone. Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas addressed the audience of construction workers, hospital employees, government officials and Trade-Union business agents in attendance at the event.  Other speakers included McCarthy President, California Region Randy Highland; Los Angeles County Department of Public Works Assistant Deputy Director David P Howard; Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building & Construction Trades Council Representative Ron Miller; and McCarthy Project Director Michael Wiggins.

“The MLK, Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center project is off to a great start,” said Wiggins. “In just six months, the contract was awarded, design was completed, permitting was obtained and topping out of the structural steel was accomplished.”

Guests at the topping out event were given the opportunity to sign the beam before it was raised and set in place. The audience applauded when construction workers from Junior Steel lifted and secured the ceremonial steel beam to the top of the structure.

The project, which broke ground on January 25, 2012, is currently on schedule for completion in October 2013. McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is constructing the 132,550-square-foot design-build facility, which was designed to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certification standards.  Once completed, the four-story medical facility will house five operating rooms, dentistry, oncology and physical and occupational therapy services. The project also includes 10 acres of site parking and landscape, offsite signalization and street improvements, as well as a 31,000-square-foot LEED Silver-rated renovation to existing administration space.

Located on the existing Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Center campus, fronting on 120th Street in the Willowbrook community of Los Angeles, the project is being built with conventional pile foundations on concrete piers and a structural steel moment-frame with concrete-filled metal deck.

The MLK, Jr. Ambulatory Care Center project is the second project McCarthy has completed at the medical center. The first was the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Public Health which opened in October 2011. This design/build project, located on the north end of the MLK, Jr. campus, replaced the existing South Health Center and included construction of a two-level, 31,000-square-foot medical office building and an adjacent 76-car parking lot.

Other project team members involved in the current Martin Luther King, Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center project include: HDR Architecture, Inc. – architect and interior designer; KPFF – structural engineer; Psomas – civil engineer; SASCO – electrical design-builder; TMAD – mechanical and plumbing peer reviewer; Lynn Capouya – landscape architect; ACCO – Mechanical design-builder; Murray Company – plumbing design-builder and Sharpe Interiors/Eagle Summit – drywall/light-gauge framing subcontractor.

McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. is the nation’s eighth largest domestic general contractor (Engineering News-Record, May 2012) and has been ranked among the top five national healthcare builders by Modern Healthcare since the magazine began its annual ranking more than 30 years ago.  As the largest American-based healthcare builder in the country, the firm has completed over $2.4 billion in healthcare work in Southern California alone.  In addition to Newport Beach, McCarthy has offices in San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco, Calif.; Phoenix; Las Vegas; Dallas; Houston; St. Louis; Collinsville, Ill. and Atlanta.  McCarthy is 100 percent employee owned. More information about the company is available online at www.mccarthy.com .