Children's Hospital's new South Fayette facility on track for fall opening

A $24 million Children's Hospital's outpatient facility in South Fayette will open on schedule this fall, officials said Monday.

When it opens on Sept. 29, Children's South, under construction along Millers Run Road, will relocate from Bethel Park, expanding pediatric services in the four-story ambulatory care facility. That will enable parents to seek some services that Children's offers only in Lawrenceville, officials said.

“It lowers the threshold for people seeking care, which we think is important,” Dr. Andrew Urbach, associate chief medical officer at Children's, said during a tour of the site.

In Bethel Park, Children's provides physical, occupational and speech therapies in leased space on Oxford Drive. It provides occupational therapy and radiology services for adults and children, and specialty care and express clinics for children at UPMC South Hills in Bethel Park.

The South Fayette site will increase exam room space for specialty care, including adolescent medicine, cardiology and orthopedics, and Children's Express Care. It will add services offered in Lawrenceville, such as behavioral health programs, a cochlear implant clinic and magnetic resonance imaging, said Kathy Guatteri, vice president of outpatient services at Children's Hospital and president of Children's Community Pediatrics.

Children's has been in Bethel Park for 15 years, but its pediatric services outgrew the space three years ago, Guatteri said. The space for physical, occupational and speech therapy will more than double in South Fayette, she said.

Officials estimate the new hospital will log about 72,000 patient visits in its first year, increasing to 100,100 visits after that, she said.

The top floor will remain a shell for future growth.

“South Fayette is a growing community, and it's very quick access from Interstate 79,” Guatteri said.

Between 2000 and 2010, the township's population grew 18 percent to 14,416, according to the census bureau.

Children's Hospital developed the new Children's South with lessons learned from Children's North, which opened in Franklin Park in 1997, she said.

The hospital's strategy is to meet parents' needs by taking high-quality pediatric care to communities with freestanding, pediatric-specific ambulatory care centers that offer physician and ancillary services near major highways, Guatteri said. Children's also has Children's East, an ambulatory care center in a larger adult medical office building in Monroeville, and six smaller, specialty care centers in more distant areas, including Erie and Hermitage.

Located beside the former Star City Cinema, the Children's South building is situated on 2.6 acres of property that UPMC purchased from South Fayette for $1.65 million in 2012. As a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, UPMC guaranteed in its bid that it would pay 50 percent of the development's taxes.

UPMC also agreed to donate $100,000 to the township's planned redevelopment of the former cinema as a civic center for municipal administration.

The Children's South property once was part of a 15-acre parcel, which included the old theater, that South Fayette bought from Shelby Corp. for $5 million in 2009 with the intent to develop a civic center.

South Fayette officials still are exploring options for use of the property, said Joseph Horowitz, president of the South Fayette commissioners.

“And we're not going to rush into any decisions,” said Horowitz, who said there was no plan in place to pay for the civic center or its operations when the current board came into office.

“But as far as Children's being there, it's obviously a great asset to the community. I think it will be helpful to a lot of things, including improving the value of that land,” he said.

Tory N. Parrish is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach her at 412-380-5662 or tparrish@tribweb.com.