‘Watershed moment:’ Final beam placed on new St. Luke’s Boise hospital tower
The last beam was placed on St. Luke’s new hospital tower at the downtown Boise campus on Friday, marking a milestone in the construction of the $1.1 billion medical center expansion.
St. Luke’s Health System leadership and staff, along with employees from Layton Construction, gathered across the street from the site to watch as a large crane lowered the final beam.
This “topping off ceremony” is a tradition in the construction industry to commemorate the work that made it happen and celebrate the placement of the highest beam.
Construction on the nine-story building at First and Fort streets began in 2024 as part of St. Luke’s Boise Development Plan for the downtown campus. The site was just a “hole in the ground” about 15 months ago, said Dennis Mesaros, St. Luke’s vice president of population health for Boise, Elmore and McCall.
But the project really began more than 20 years ago, with conversations and plans about how St. Luke’s could expand to meet the community’s growing needs, Mesaros said.
“It is so critical to look at this, this topping-out ceremony, to literally pause, look up and see what we’re accomplishing together as a team,” Mesaros said. “And sometimes we don’t underscore enough the importance of collaboration, working together.”
Mesaros called it a “watershed moment” for St. Luke’s and the Boise region. He said the building represents the hospital system’s commitment to providing access to medical care, modernized facilities and environments that support healing, as well as those who work in health care.
“As a not-for-profit health care system, everything that we do is rooted in service, and what you see behind you is a campus that exists to improve the health communities we serve,” Mesaros said.
Staff members, employees and those who worked on the project signed the beam before it was raised and placed on the top of the structure. The beam was adorned with an evergreen tree and the American flag, representing prosperity and honoring the country as it nears its official 250th birthday.
The new 860,000-square-foot hospital tower sits adjacent to the existing tower, and the two eventually will be connected. The new building is nearly one story shorter than the existing one, with nine stories above ground and two below, according to the St. Luke’s project website.
The building will house 80 additional patient beds, bringing the hospital’s capacity to more than 500 beds. It will also have seven new operating rooms, for a total of 28, and it will have two imaging systems to aid in diagnosis of strokes and other neurological disorders.
Another building under construction is a medical office plaza that will be 180,000 square feet, housing multiple clinics and providers.
The entire project is expected to be complete by the end of 2029, according to St. Luke’s.
