In August, Dallas-based Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals revealed its plans to build a 36-bed inpatient physical rehab facility at The Villages, the massive active-adult and retirement community in Florida. That hospital will be Everest’s eighth under construction in the Sunshine State.
The 41,000-sf Villages project on 8.47 acres of land in Oxford, Fla., will cost $24 million to build. It is the latest in Everest’s construction of identical multi-specialty acute-care hospitals in several states. The hospitals serve patients recovering from stroke, brain injury, neurological conditions, trauma, spinal cord injury, speech impediments, amputation, pulmonary disease, orthopedic injury, COVID-19, and other medically complex conditions.
The hospitals are equipped with in- and outpatient physical therapy gyms, an outdoor mobility courtyard, aqua therapy, a furnished life skills training apartment with a full kitchen and bathroom, in-house dialysis, and a pharmacy. There are also gathering areas for families that include a large dining room.
DBA Architects, based in McKinney, Texas, whose design work is heavily in the residential sector, provided the prototype design for Everest that had to be universal enough so it could be replicated to accommodate Everest’s expansion strategy. The company opened its first hospital in Longview, Texas, in June 2019 and currently has six facilities operating in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Ohio. Everest has another 10 hospitals in various stages of design and construction, with its facility in El Paso, Texas, scheduled to open by the end of this year, and another in San Antonio opening in the first quarter of 2023.
Bryan Moore, DBA Architects’ CEO and President, tells BD+C that Everest’s plan has been to grow as rapidly as possible to meet increasing physical rehab needs. That growth is being propelled by entrepreneur Marc Sparks, Everest’s Co-founder and President of the private-equity firm Timber Creek Capital, which is Everest’s developer. (According to his online bio, Sparks has been involved in over 60 startups, “some outrageously successful, others downright disasters.”)
Sparks has stated that he wanted Everest’s ambiance to be more hotel-like and service oriented than institutional. “What Marc didn’t want was a hospital that looked like a place where people go to die,” says Moore. So Everest Rehab’s design and programming include art work, natural light, high ceilings, outdoor dining, room service, and social events.
A plan for expansion: Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals
Repetitive design is often frowned upon by architects, but it certainly has its place: ask any data center or multifamily housing developer. And Everest, says Moore, was attracted to this kind of design’s economies of scale, so that the hospitals could offer “the same menus, same therapies, and medications.” Moore describes this process as “cut and paste,” although he is quick to add that it DBA still had plenty of design leeway.
There’s no prefabrication in the construction of Everest’s hospitals, although Moore says that prefab is now being considered for the patients’ wing as Everest plots its expansion. (Everest’s buildings are expandable to 48 beds.)
Everest hasn’t stated yet how many hospitals it intends to build and operate beyond the 16 it already has opened or are under construction. Everest’s business model uses an actuarial program to determine need based on the number of rehab hospitals and beds within a 100-mile radius of a given market. Last year, the Florida market “opened up,” says Moore, when the DeSantis administration did away with a restriction that had required arduous proof of need before a new healthcare facility could be built.
Among the four contractors it has used to build its hospitals is H.J. High Construction, which Moore says has experience building hospitals in Florida.
Moore and Sparks met when they were working on a homeless shelter project for Samaritan Inn. When Sparks shared his vision for Everest’s rehabilitation hospitals, Moore was ready to jump in: DBA was already doing a lot of repetitive design for its multifamily clients. And back in the late 1980s, the firm was involved in the prototype design business for fast food franchises.
Related Stories
| Oct 30, 2014
CannonDesign releases guide for specifying flooring in healthcare settings
The new report, "Flooring Applications in Healthcare Settings," compares and contrasts different flooring types in the context of parameters such as health and safety impact, design and operational issues, environmental considerations, economics, and product options.
| Oct 30, 2014
Perkins Eastman and Lee, Burkhart, Liu to merge practices
The merger will significantly build upon the established practices—particularly healthcare—of both firms and diversify their combined expertise, particularly on the West Coast.
| Oct 21, 2014
Passive House concept gains momentum in apartment design
Passive House, an ultra-efficient building standard that originated in Germany, has been used for single-family homes since its inception in 1990. Only recently has the concept made its way into the U.S. commercial buildings market.
| Oct 21, 2014
Hartford Hospital plans $150 million expansion for Bone and Joint Institute
The bright-white structures will feature a curvilinear form, mimicking bones and ligament.
| Oct 16, 2014
Perkins+Will white paper examines alternatives to flame retardant building materials
The white paper includes a list of 193 flame retardants, including 29 discovered in building and household products, 50 found in the indoor environment, and 33 in human blood, milk, and tissues.
| Oct 15, 2014
Harvard launches ‘design-centric’ center for green buildings and cities
The impetus behind Harvard's Center for Green Buildings and Cities is what the design school’s dean, Mohsen Mostafavi, describes as a “rapidly urbanizing global economy,” in which cities are building new structures “on a massive scale.”
| Oct 13, 2014
Debunking the 5 myths of health data and sustainable design
The path to more extensive use of health data in green building is blocked by certain myths that have to be debunked before such data can be successfully incorporated into the project delivery process.
| Oct 12, 2014
AIA 2030 commitment: Five years on, are we any closer to net-zero?
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the American Institute of Architects’ effort to have architecture firms voluntarily pledge net-zero energy design for all their buildings by 2030.
| Oct 8, 2014
Massive ‘healthcare village’ in Nevada touted as world’s largest healthcare project
The $1.2 billion Union Village project is expected to create 12,000 permanent jobs when completed by 2024.
| Oct 3, 2014
Designing for women's health: Helping patients survive and thrive
In their quest for total wellness, women today are more savvy healthcare consumers than ever before. They expect personalized, top-notch clinical care with seamless coordination at a reasonable cost, and in a convenient location. Is that too much to ask?
