After several years of planning and gathering feedback from the community, Baptist Health South Florida (BHSF) is building its first outpatient facility in Miami Beach, Fla. The 60,000-square-foot building, constructed by real estate developer Crescent Heights (Miami), will house a variety services, including primary care, physician offices, physical therapy, a same-day GI center, diagnostic imaging, urgent care center, dedicated parking garage, and community health education space.

In response to public input, some of the ground-floor spaces will include retail tenants to support an active streetscape, which will include an expanded sidewalk and outdoor seating. The project is planned to open in late 2017.

The building, designed by Perkins+Will’s Miami office, takes a departure from BHSF’s more familiar Mediterranean-style architecture to respect the Miami Beach context with regard to massing and materiality and also to foster community interaction within the urban environment.

One of project challenges involved its location on a busy three-lane street with a freeway exit ramp, increasing the likelihood that most visitors will enter the building lobby from the garage elevators. To overcome this challenge, the planning team designed the program stacking so that the garage levels are centrally located (floors 2 and 3) to minimize walking and travel distances.

The Baptist program will occupy the ground level, part of the third floor, fourth floor, and the rooftop terrace with heavily equipped departments such as imaging, ambulatory surgery, and GI services located on the ground floor.

Physical therapy is located on level three, with direct access to the parking garage as well as a small balcony for outdoor use. Outdoor space for physical therapy is also available on the roof terrace, which has been designed with a flat-paver system raised over the sloped roof deck to maximize safety and accessibility.

Primary care and urgent care services are collocated on the fourth floor to allow them to share resources, such as x-ray, lab, and administrative areas, and flex their spaces in off-hours. Physicians’ offices and a community resource room also populate the fourth floor.

Finally, while traditional medical office buildings internalize circulation, this project provides a shared, interior public promenade along the street front on both the first and fourth floors. This public space connects all program elements, activates the building edge, and maximizes natural light, while the sidewalk activity extends through the glass storefront and into the building, inviting the community inside.