An Oct. 25 grand opening celebration introduced the community to a new 350,000-square-foot sports-focused medical center specializing in orthopedic care to treat conditions such as broken bones or torn knee ligaments, as well as injury prevention for young athletes. Planning and design work on the $157 million Frisco, Texas facility began in 2014, and on Oct. 10 the facility welcomed its first patients.

Working with HKS architects on behalf of the client, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, WSP USA was responsible for the project’s mechanical-electrical-plumbing (MEP) and fire protection engineering; life safety consulting, including atrium modelling; building technology systems design, including structured cabling for telecommunication, security, telecom and the distributed antenna system; and acoustic consulting.

The new facility offers day surgeries as well as physical therapy, and a fracture clinic accepts walk-in patients. As a teaching facility, research will continue to play a large role in the care and treatment of patients, and it features a conference center with a 155-seat lecture hall for training.

“This facility includes many features that make it feel inviting to a child, such as the abundant use of color throughout the facility,” said Douglas Lacy, project manager for WSP. “Of special note is the color-changing façade of the Movement Science Lab, where WSP worked with HKS to bring a creative concept to reality.”

Scottish Rite for Children Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center is the first stand-alone campus that Scottish Rite Hospital has built outside of its Dallas location, which has been its home for 97 years. The new facility gives doctors access to countless resources and allows room for the Center for Excellence in Sports Medicine to grow, where doctors can provide care at every step of a pediatric athlete’s recovery process.