Summa Health’s new tower to be system’s new front door
Summa Health’s new West Tower on its Akron City Hospital campus is taking significant shape overlooking the state Route 8 and East Market Street corridor near downtown Akron.
The $220 million, six-story building — which will also become the health system’s new front door — is the centerpiece of the $270 million first part of a two-phase project over the next six or seven years. Other Phase 1 projects include a makeover at Barberton Hospital’s campus and a new proposed medical office in Kent. Phase 2 will include renovations to the departments moving to the new building, making upgrades and creating single-patient rooms, said Ed Friedl, Summa vice president of construction and property management. The overall project is expected to cost $350 million.
Dr. Cliff Deveny, Summa interim president and CEO, has described the rise of the new tower as a metaphor for “the rebirth of Summa Health System,” which has had a tumultuous year and a half after abrupt changes to its emergency room staffing, ousting of its former CEO and subsequent loss of its emergency medicine residency program.
The tower was designed by Hasenstab Architects and Perspectus Architecture.
When the new 343,000-square-foot space is complete by next summer, the tower will feature private patient rooms; expanded surgery suites; two floors dedicated to labor and delivery services; a breast center; a multipurpose conference center and two floors of private medical surgery patient rooms.
The building’s “front door” will move from Arch Street to Forge Street.
Drivers will be able to drop off patients or their cars on a circular loop — which runs off North Forge at North Adolph — for access to the new main hospital entrance, the emergency room or the North Adolph parking deck. That will become the hospital’s main parking deck, although all other hospital decks and the current “main entrance” to the hospital on Arch Street will remain open, Friedl said. There is no parking directly at the front door, although there will be valet services, he said.
Creating a new and distinct front door is needed, Friedl said.
“If you said ‘Go to the main entrance’ and didn’t know Akron, where would you go?” Friedl asked. “If you Google it, it takes you to the center of the hospital.”
Once the structure is complete, patients will be able to see and access the main entrance from state Route 8 with easy signage, he said.
A distinguishing feature on the new building will be a back-lit screen wall facing Route 8, which will be able to glow in the evening. Friedl said the color will mostly be white, though he’s already fielded questions about other colors. “It’ll be a beacon of light when you go up and down Route 8,” he said.
The exterior front of the new tower will be a modern style, featuring mainly glass and textured gray metal panels. The back of the facility will blend the hospital’s past with the future, using some brick that is seen on many of the existing buildings on the City Hospital campus.