Kaiser Permanente officially put shovels in the ground Thursday for a new seven-story replacement hospital at its Sunnyside Medical Center campus in Happy Valley, a project the health system says will open in 2029 and take the place of the aging patient tower now on site. Kaiser is pitching the build as both a capacity boost and a sustainability play for the east side of the Portland metro area. Work will roll out in phases so the campus can keep caring for patients while construction crews operate around them.
As reported by Portland Business Journal, the ceremony kicks off a roughly three-year construction program that Kaiser and its partners have scheduled to wrap with an opening in 2029. The outlet notes that this is a full replacement of the existing hospital tower rather than a simple renovation, following a public planning process that played out last year. Local officials joined Kaiser representatives at the groundbreaking to officially launch on-site work.
In a March 31 press release from Kaiser Permanente, the system detailed plans for a seven-story, 615,000-square-foot tower that will offer 100% private patient rooms, in-room telemedicine, advanced robotics and image-guided surgical equipment, plus expanded emergency capacity. Kaiser also said the Sunnyside tower will be Oregon’s first fully electric hospital, a design choice intended to cut the campus’s carbon footprint and improve local air quality. "This significant upgrade to our campus will take us into the future of health care," said Wendy Watson, Kaiser Permanente of the Northwest's regional president.
Project teams and building program
Contractor and design materials list roughly 308 patient beds, a central utility plant, imaging and surgery suites, and a family birthing center as core pieces of the new hospital program. Andersen Construction describes the Sunnyside work as a 615,000-square-foot, seven-story hospital, while Permasteelisa notes it will supply the façade systems for the new tower. Project descriptions indicate the design adapts an existing Kaiser hospital template to Pacific Northwest conditions.
Kaiser says the current Sunnyside Medical Center will stay in operation during construction and that the older patient tower will come down after the new building opens, making room for parking, walkways and outdoor green space in its place. The goal is to limit disruption for patients and staff while the switchover happens. The health system highlights both the clinical benefits, such as more private rooms and expanded emergency capacity intended to reduce wait times, and the environmental gains tied to an all-electric design. Those details appear in Kaiser’s public statements and the project fact sheet.
Timeline and what the community should expect
The construction schedule is expected to run for roughly three years, which puts the new tower’s opening in 2029 and means the Sunnyside campus will function as an active construction site through much of the decade. The project is intended to ease pressure on health care capacity on Portland’s east side and to bring updated surgical, imaging and birthing facilities to the campus. As reported by Portland Business Journal, Thursday’s groundbreaking came after about a year of design and permitting work and starts a phase of on-site clearance and infrastructure construction.
The Sunnyside replacement ranks as one of the largest single-site health investments in the area in recent years and is expected to reshape traffic patterns, jobs and services around the campus as work moves ahead. Kaiser and its project partners say they plan to share updates at major milestones. Neighbors are being told to expect phased demolition, shifting parking plans and periodic traffic-control measures as crews move from site clearing into vertical construction later this year.
