CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Clinic is building a $190 million underground service center similar in function to Walt Disney World’s that will centralize the Clinic’s nonmedical operations, including laundry and linen distribution, according to our sister publication, Crain's Cleveland Business.
The 180,000-square-foot center will sit directly below a new parking garage that will accommodate 4,000 cars, says William Peacock, executive director of facilities and construction at the Clinic. The service building will have 17 loading docks and centralize waste management and the delivery of laundry, food and sterile equipment.
“We have a few loading docks now, but they’re not significant (enough) to take care of our needs,” Peacock says.
The underground service center is scheduled to open next year in conjunction with the opening of the Clinic's new heart hospital, shown here under construction.
The underground service center is scheduled to open in October 2008 and coincide with the planned opening of the Clinic’s new $475-million heart hospital and the $104-million Glickman Tower, which will house the Glickman Urological Institute and other specialties.
“We’re adding 1.3 million square feet to our campus,” Peacock says. “With over 400 (additional) hospital beds, that’s a significant increase in linen, laundry, food service and, of course, any waste or refuse.”
The service center will help move such housekeeping activities away from patient areas and steer many delivery vehicles off the streets surrounding the hospital buildings.
Some of the existing eight main loading docks scattered throughout the Clinic campus will serve as backup delivery sites, while others will be taken out of service.
An 800-foot tunnel wide enough to accommodate motorized carts in moving items such as laundry is being dug to connect the new service center to the planned parking garage and the Clinic’s underground basement system and walking tunnels.
Sodexho USA provides laundry services to the Cleveland Clinic through a central laundry facility located in the Collinwood Yards community.
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