ST. LOUIS, MO — McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. has announced the completion of construction and celebrated the official opening of the new Plaza West Tower, an expansion of heart and vascular patient care, as well as radiology, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. The 16-story, 660,000-square-foot Plaza West Tower is designed to enhance the experience for patients and their families under the care of WashU Medicine physicians and Barnes-Jewish Hospital clinical teams. The tower has 224 private inpatient rooms and 56 private intensive care unit rooms, advanced imaging, and the latest in surgical preparation and recovery.
The design-build project, delivered by McCarthy in collaboration with CannonDesign and BJC HealthCare, was one of the largest design-build health care projects in the Midwest. Additional groups included BR+A Consulting Engineers, Thornton Tomasetti as structural engineer and Castle Contracting as civil engineer. With the exception of Thornton Tomasetti, all of the project partners and BJC HealthCare are headquartered in St. Louis.
“At its heart, Plaza West Tower is about people, the patients who will be cared for here, the families who will find comfort here, and the caregivers whose work will transform lives,” said Mike Stapf, Senior Vice President of Healthcare for McCarthy Building Companies in St. Louis. “Building a hospital expansion in the community where we live, where our own families receive care, makes this project especially meaningful. Every design and construction decision was made with that personal commitment in mind, creating a setting that supports compassionate care and clinical excellence for decades to come.”
Design and preconstruction began in December 2019, with construction officially starting in November 2021. Throughout the process, the McCarthy team navigated a series of unusual challenges that underscored the complexity of building a hospital expansion within a dense, active, multi-building urban campus.
From installing a chilled water loop that connected the new tower to the existing campus system by routing it over a neighboring building, to demolishing an 11-foot-wide pedestrian bridge that required closing a major road for a weekend, every step demanded precise coordination and innovative problem-solving.
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To meet the hospital’s need for efficiency, quality, and minimal disruption, McCarthy implemented a prefabrication strategy, including 280 patient room bathrooms built by St. Louis-based T.J. Wies Contracting. Fully finished bathroom pods were manufactured off site and delivered ready to install. Each pod included plumbing, electrical, tile, fixtures and finishes, all constructed under controlled factory conditions to ensure precision and consistency. Once delivered, the pods were lifted by cranes into place floor by floor. This approach shortened installation schedules, minimized onsite congestion, and provided better quality assurance compared to traditional field-built methods.
Plaza West Tower was built on one of the busiest corners of the Washington University Medical Campus, with no adjacent laydown or staging area. Instead, McCarthy managed construction operations from a small site located across a major roadway from the tower. This required careful sequencing of deliveries and tight coordination of pedestrian and traffic flow. Every activity was planned to ensure uninterrupted hospital access, safeguard patients and staff, and keep the project progressing safely and efficiently.
“Working on a landlocked site in the heart of a major medical center required us to rethink every step of the construction process,” said Kris Mannen, Senior Superintendent for McCarthy Building Companies. “Through prefabrication, creative logistics, and close collaboration with our partners, we were able to deliver a world-class facility while minimizing the impact on daily hospital operations.”
Plaza West Tower represents BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine’s investment in enhanced patient care. In addition to featuring expanded inpatient units, radiology, and other clinical spaces designed for adaptability, resilience, and long-term growth, the new tower is also designed to accommodate surges in patient volume and the need for isolation in the event of future pandemics.
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“This new patient tower is a major milestone for BJC HealthCare, WashU Medicine, and the city of St. Louis,” said Natalie Petzoldt, Design Team Project Executive on the Plaza West Tower project and Principal and Health Market Leader at CannonDesign. “This is more than just a building; this achieves a vision to provide the community with a new level of care and experience that matches the excellence of top-ranked academic medical center.”
McCarthy, a national health care construction manager, celebrates another milestone with the opening of Plaza West Tower, continuing its more than 160-year legacy of building health care facilities across the Midwest and the nation.
More than 3,700 architects, engineers, project managers, skilled trades men and women, apprentices, and interns were engaged in the construction of the tower, providing significant economic impact to the region in addition to the clinical and patient benefits.
