McCarthy, Jacobs Complete Construction on $373M CHOC Tower

A team led by McCarthy Building Cos. and Jacobs has completed construction on the Children’s Hospital of Orange County’s new Southwest Tower in Orange, California, according to a June 16 press release from CannonDesign, the project’s New York-based engineer. McCarthy served as the general contractor, while Dallas-based Jacobs was the construction manager.

McCarthy, headquartered in St. Louis, broke ground on the nine-story, 300,000-square-foot tower in 2022. In 2023, the Orange County Business Journal estimated the project’s cost at approximately $373 million. The new facility was designed to complement CHOC’s existing Bill Holmes Tower, also built by McCarthy and designed by CannonDesign in 2012.

“This facility enables McCarthy Building Companies to leverage our deep well of expertise in the healthcare sector that will have a positive impact well beyond the scope of this project,” said Jim Madrid, president of McCarthy’s Southern Pacific region, in the groundbreaking announcement.

The Southwest Tower expands CHOC’s pediatric outpatient services and includes:

• Five floors of specialty clinics

• A research institute focused on clinical trials and pediatric research

• Oncology infusion services

• A comprehensive imaging center

  
  

Craig Cherf, a senior preconstruction director involved in both the Southwest and Bill Holmes tower projects, has a personal tie to the hospital. His son Jackson was treated at CHOC’s Hyundai Cancer Institute for acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 4. Jackson is now cancer-free, according to a hospital blog post. “I love working on children’s hospitals,” Cherf said in the 2024 post. “It’s my favorite thing to do.”

In addition to the new tower, CHOC also opened a 24-bed cardiovascular intensive care unit and a 28-bed neuroscience unit inside the Bill Holmes Tower to address growing demand for advanced pediatric care, according to CannonDesign.

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