Renovate & Expand Space for VA Patient Support

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The Iowa City VA Health Care System’s support staff groups were located in Building No. 2 on campus. Due to the size and location of the building, they often dealt with site circulation issues, as well as cramped and outdated office and storage space.

The conference room doubled as the staff break room. In some cases, staff members were in offices so small that they couldn’t view a set of drawings or store material samples. Due to a lack of space, semi-truck deliveries were being made at the facility’s main entrance, where patients and staff also entered and exited.

Landlocked on a triangular parcel, there wasn’t much room for expansion. However, the departments housed in Building No. 2 needed more workspace and privacy, as well as a way to separate deliveries from the main entrance to improve aesthetics and safety.
The original design plan involved a renovation and addition to Building No. 2; however, Shive-Hattery discovered that this plan would not provide enough space to house everything the Iowa City VA Health Care System required. Leaving Building No. 2 in its existing state wasn’t an option; either it would continue to perpetuate poor site circulation and congest the building’s main entrance.

Instead, Shive-Hattery identified an opportunity to provide even more value through a new design concept that reduced the project’s scope. This alternative approach resulted in more usable space for the exact upfront costs.

The eastern half of Building No. 2 was demolished, redesigned, and reconstructed to efficiently house offices for facility design, safety, and human resources. Located along the side and back of the building, three new loading docks and a dedicated service vehicle entrance help separate semi-truck deliveries from patient and staff parking and entrance areas.

The new building layout offers more workspace, increased privacy, a separate break room, and meeting spaces, as well as additional room for storage and collaboration.

Building No. 2 now provides a clean, safe, more sanitary secondary entrance to the Iowa City VA Health Care System, adjacent to employee parking and separate from patient traffic, so no one has to work their way through trucks and deliveries to enter the building. Employees also have larger offices, adequate storage space, and collaborative spaces that are separate from the break rooms.

Instead of passersby seeing a dock in front of the facility, they now see a modern building with docks tucked behind. Designed to accommodate additional floors in the future, the building gives the landlocked facility options for future expansion if needed.