UCSF starts $1.5B hospital complex
Resource type: News
San Francisco Business Times | [ View Original Source (opens in new window) ]
by Ron Leuty
UCSF Medical Center broke ground on its $1.5 billion women’s, children’s and cancer hospital complex, a two-city-block project in San Francisco’s Mission Bay.
Leaders hope the 878,000-square-foot project will be the site where basic research from across 16th Street — at the University of California, San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus — is translated into treatments, cures and diagnostics for patients. At the same time, they said, it would be an economic engine for San Francisco, with about six of every 10 patients coming from outside the city.
Among the luminaries present for the groundbreaking were Atlantic Philanthropies’ Chuck Feeney, the Duty Free Shoppers entrepreneur who made a $125 million matching gift; Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, who gave $100 million toward the now-named UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital; entertainer MC Hammer; former Banc of America Chairman and UCSF Foundation Chair Richard Rosenberg and University of California President Mark Yudof.
The program was capped by a ceremonial shoveling of dirt and a poem about needles, written and ready by “nearly 12” year old Paddy O’Brien. O’Brien is a UCSF Medical Center patient, diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer when he was 9. His cancer is in remission.