Healthcare
Aurora Mental Health Center – Stith 1st & 5th Floor Renovation
This 25,000 SF renovation was spread across two floors of the Aurora Mental Health Center. The first-floor renovations included a new office administration area, community room, dining, and commercial kitchen and servery. In addition, spaces were reconfigured to create a new lobby and reception area to welcome clients and staff. Extensive coordination on the use of first floor building entries was required with construction work phased to minimize impact during times of peak staff and client traffic. The fifth-floor space was renovated to accommodate offices, a break room, restrooms, storage, with some group therapy and consultation rooms, and a flexible conference/training space. Electrical system shutdowns and tie-ins were scheduled overnight and weekends to minimize impact to ongoing center operations. The most challenging aspects of the project were the first-floor kitchen and fifth-floor conference/training space.
The first-floor renovation work upgraded the kitchen, servery line, commercial hoods, ansul system, make up air units, and all new commercial kitchen equipment. A separate kitchen design consultant was used for the kitchen and servery spaces and an equipment vendor was hired to place equipment based on the design, after the kitchen was constructed.
Renovation work on the fifth floor included the creation of a large conference/meeting space with operable partitions to separate it into three smaller meeting rooms. The existing building structure could not support the new partition system, so structural reinforcement beams were placed by hydraulic crane through a fifth-floor window and picked into place.