Crane watchers in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood have plenty to look at right now. Across the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital campus, a new three-story administrative support building is edging toward completion, while work to bring a seven-story hospital tower that will expand neonatal, surgical, and behavioral health capacity is moving into its next phases.
Support building rising on 52nd Street
The Administrative Support Building at the corner of 52nd and Dover is a three-story, 31,300-square-foot office structure that will bring staff together into a seismically updated space ahead of the new hospital tower. Construction on the ASB started in September 2023 after demolition and relocation work, and UCSF lists the project as wrapping up later in 2026, with daytime construction hours of 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, according to UCSF Real Estate.
New hospital tower: what it will add
The New Hospital Building won final approval from the UC Board of Regents in July 2024 and is planned as a seven-story, seismically upgraded facility that will expand inpatient and emergency services. UCSF says the project will significantly increase the number of single-patient rooms, add a neonatal intensive care unit, seven new operating rooms, and a 20-bed inpatient behavioral health unit as part of the campus modernization plan, per UCSF News.
Contracts and schedules show the project shifting from preconstruction to full build. A contract announced in September 2025 values the construction at roughly $960 million for an approximately 277,500 square foot hospital tower and a separate 269 space parking garage with a rooftop heliport. That release also noted construction work was expected to begin in September 2025, with substantial completion anticipated around 2031, according to Business Wire/Tutor Perini.
Staging the campus: decanting and moves
Because the new tower will rise on the existing patient campus, UCSF has been shuffling departments and staff to clear space. The university reports the decanting phase covered more than 100,000 square feet and roughly 500 people, with dozens of individual moves. About half of those moves were complete as of January 2025, a milestone project managers called critical to getting the site ready for large scale construction, per UCSF Real Estate.
The main project area sits on a triangular parcel bounded by Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Highway 24, and 52nd Street. Floors one through five of the new hospital are designed to align in height with the existing tower, allowing the buildings to connect internally. A site visit and renderings highlight early on-site work and a planned southern parking structure for patients and families, filling in the picture of the project’s footprint in Temescal, per SF YIMBY.
UCSF frames the effort as part of a roughly $1.6 billion campus modernization that will target LEED Gold certification, cut water use by about 35 percent and add EV charging and bicycle parking. The university has also emphasized commitments to local hiring, union jobs, and opportunities for small and disabled veteran enterprises as part of the project’s economic impact, according to UCSF News.
For neighbors, it all means years of active construction, temporary staging zones, and occasional traffic or lane changes as the site ramps up into full build-out. UCSF and local coverage have started publishing community notices and photo updates for the area around 747 52nd Street, showing early site activity and previewing what the finished campus is expected to look like, per SF YIMBY.
