The $480 million Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital sits on the site of the first Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital, covering 250,000 square feet and bringing a freestanding children’s hospital back to Tacoma roughly 30 years after operations moved across the street into Tacoma General Hospital. The hospital will start taking patients on May 16, 2026, following a community ribbon-cutting celebration held on May 2. The facility provides 82 private patient rooms with shelled space for future needs and ten operating rooms, with the latest technology installed throughout and a child-friendly kitten scanner where kids can send a stuffed animal through a pretend scan to understand how the real procedure works. Each floor is decorated with Pacific Northwest themes, and the facility adds more food options including a self-dispensing, salad bar-style station. Mary Bridge Children’s has partnered with CBRE for project management, ESa (Earl Swensson Associates, Nashville) and TGB Architects (Edmonds, Washington) for architecture and design, WSP USA for Building Engineering Services, SDG for structural engineering, AHBL for civil engineering and landscape design, and Layton Construction and Abbott Construction for construction of the new hospital. Plans for a standalone children’s hospital first surfaced in 2018, but the design was reworked after the COVID pandemic to address rising costs and lessons learned in clinical care. The project was first announced in 2020, but pandemic-era supply chain problems drove up costs, with the final price tag hitting $480 million — well above the original estimate of $344 million.
When the original Mary Bridge facility opened in 1955, it solved a decades-long problem of having to drive paediatric patients to Seattle for care. Seven decades later, the new building is solving a structurally similar problem: Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital serves around 100,000 kids each year from all around the region, and doing so from within a shared adult hospital building has placed inherent limits on the clinical environment, the spatial design and the family experience that no renovation programme could fully overcome. The tension between a children’s hospital embedded in an adult facility and the standard of care that modern paediatric medicine demands is not unique to Tacoma. Across the Pacific Northwest, paediatric capacity has been under sustained pressure: Seattle Children’s Hospital has expanded repeatedly in recent years to absorb growing regional demand, and the absence of a freestanding alternative in the South Sound corridor has historically meant that complex paediatric cases from Pierce County, Thurston County and Kitsap County often required families to travel to Seattle. Mary Bridge is the only Level II Paediatric Trauma Center in Western Washington, which gives the new standalone building a regional significance that goes well beyond its local Tacoma footprint. The redesign that emerged from the post-COVID planning rethink, shifting from a single large inpatient tower to a 250,000-square-foot hospital supplemented by a separate medical office building with outpatient and behavioural health services, reflects a more sophisticated understanding of where paediatric volume is actually growing: not in overnight admissions, which technology and early discharge protocols have reduced, but in ambulatory, specialty and behavioural health encounters, which have expanded substantially across the post-pandemic paediatric population. This regional push for new hospital infrastructure is also reflected elsewhere in Washington, including the recently launched New Samaritan Hospital project, where groundbreaking has marked the start of another major facility build aimed at strengthening long-term healthcare capacity. Leaders say shifting Mary Bridge back into its own tower will open up space inside Tacoma General for adult patients and create room for future growth across the campus.
Campus Configuration, Clinical Features and Pacific Northwest Design Identity
- Freestanding paediatric hospital: 250,000 square feet, built on the site of the original 1955 Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital
- 82 private patient rooms with shelled space for future capacity needs; ten operating rooms
- Eight operating rooms equipped with the latest technology, confirmed during pre-opening media tours
- Child-friendly kitten scanner: allows children to send a stuffed animal through a simulation scan to demystify the real procedure before undergoing it
- Pacific Northwest interior design theme applied floor by floor throughout the building
- Playrooms for younger children; dedicated hangout and recreation spaces for teenagers
- Patient rooms with separate, dedicated family space integrated into the room design
- New food options including a self-dispensing, salad bar-style dining station
- Medical office building with specialty clinics and expanded outpatient services began construction mid-2024, delivering ambulatory, urgent care and behavioural health crisis management services as a companion facility to the inpatient tower
- Campus programme also includes renovation of the Tree House family housing facility near Wright Park, and repurposing of the existing 82-bed Mary Bridge space inside Tacoma General for adult use
- Patient first admission date: May 16, 2026
Project Fact Sheet
- Project Name: New Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital, Tacoma
- Owner/Operator: Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital, a division of MultiCare Health System
- Location: Original 1955 Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital site, Tacoma, Washington
- Total Project Cost: $480 million (final); original estimate $344 million (2021); revised to $415 million (2022) before final figure confirmed
- Gross Floor Area (Inpatient Tower): 250,000 square feet
- Private Patient Rooms: 82 (with shelled space for future expansion)
- Operating Rooms: 10 (8 confirmed active on media tour)
- Project Type: Freestanding standalone paediatric hospital campus
- Hospital Classification: State-designated Level II Paediatric Trauma Center for Western Washington; only paediatric hospital in Southwest Washington
- Ribbon Cutting: May 2, 2026 (community celebration)
- First Patients Admitted: May 16, 2026
- Construction Start: Spring 2023 (main hospital tower); mid-2024 (medical office building)
- Original Announcement: 2018 (concept); 2020 (formal project launch); redesigned 2022 post-pandemic
- Project Manager: CBRE
- Architect (Lead): ESa (Earl Swensson Associates), Nashville, Tennessee
- Architect (Local): TGB Architects, Edmonds, Washington
- General Contractors: Layton Construction (Salt Lake City) and Abbott Construction (Tacoma) — joint delivery
- Building Engineering: WSP USA, Dallas, Texas
- Structural Engineering: SDG (Structural Design Group), Nashville, Tennessee
- Civil Engineering and Landscape Design: AHBL, Tacoma, Washington
- Companion Facility: Medical Office Building (ambulatory clinics, urgent care, behavioural health crisis services) — under separate construction from mid-2024
Project Team
- Owner/Client: MultiCare Health System — Tacoma-based not-for-profit health system operating multiple hospitals across the South Sound region; Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital is its dedicated paediatric hospital brand, founded in 1955 and the state-designated Level II Paediatric Trauma Center for Western Washington
- Chief Operating Officer, Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital: Ben Whitworth — principal spokesperson throughout the construction and opening phases; described the standalone hospital as a long-held dream for the Tacoma paediatric community and guided media through pre-opening tours of the completed facility
- Former President, Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital: Jeff Poltawsky — led the original project vision from 2018 through early planning phases, articulating the ambition to create one of the nation’s best and safest children’s hospitals in Tacoma
- Project Manager: CBRE — responsible for overall project management across the full campus delivery programme
- Architect of Record (Lead): ESa (Earl Swensson Associates) — Nashville-based healthcare architecture firm with an extensive US children’s hospital portfolio, including the Arthur M. Blank Hospital for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta; led the overall design concept, clinical planning and building architecture for the new Mary Bridge campus
- Architect (Local Collaborator): TGB Architects — Edmonds, Washington-based architectural practice providing local design and permitting support in collaboration with ESa
- General Contractor (Lead): Layton Construction — Salt Lake City-based healthcare construction specialist; lead general contractor for the inpatient tower
- General Contractor (Local Partner): Abbott Construction — Tacoma-based construction firm serving as local general contractor partner alongside Layton for the full campus delivery
- Building Engineering: WSP USA — global engineering consultancy, Dallas; responsible for mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering services across the building
- Structural Engineering: SDG (Structural Design Group) — Nashville-based structural engineering firm
- Civil Engineering and Landscape Design: AHBL — Tacoma-based civil engineering and landscape architecture firm providing site-specific civil infrastructure and landscape design
- Philanthropic Partner: Mary Bridge Children’s Foundation — community fundraising arm supporting capital campaign contributions toward the new hospital
