New $480M Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital will have play area, ‘kitten’ scanner
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- Mary Bridge’s $480M children’s hospital opens March 2026.
- Design includes pediatric trauma care, imaging suite and family-friendly rooms.
- Special features like a 'kitten scanner' aim to reduce sedation and patient anxiety.
For now, the future home of MultiCare’s Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital is abuzz with construction, a shell of its future self.
During a recent tour of the future Level II pediatric trauma site with a six-story hospital tower set to open next March, The News Tribune saw the beginnings of patient rooms, operating rooms, a future emergency department and more.
The site is across from the current hospital, 317 M.L.K. Jr Way.
One of the planned eight operating rooms showed exposed HVAC and piping.
“Above us you can see these big steel supports,” said Ben Whitworth, chief operating officer for Mary Bridge. “There’s four of them in each room, and that’s where the booms that hold the equipment and the lights are mounted to, as opposed to having those things on wheels.”
“From a design perspective, that’s a real safety issue,” added Jeff Poltawsky, president and market leader for the hospital. “There’s nothing to trip on.”
That level of detail may not mean much to patients, but to Poltawsky and Whitworth, no detail was too trivial to consider in the planning.
“Every square inch of this building has a purpose,” said Poltawsky. “I mean, we designed this so intentionally and so densely to get the most out of it. I think that’s what I’m most proud of — how efficient the building is.”
Planning took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. “You can imagine we how challenging it was with all the uncertainty about supply costs, the cost of concrete and steel and everything,” Poltawsky said.
The total project cost is around $480 million. Included in the expansion beyond the hospital is two new parking garages along South L Street bringing more than 800 stalls for staff, family and visitors.
A fact sheet provided during the tour by MultiCare notes that at the entire site, “The paved surfaces combined could create a new road from Tacoma to Gig Harbor.”
The new 262,000-square-foot hospital, with 82 licensed beds, will come with a central entry and digital check-in, central elevator bank for patients/family and improved signage/wayfinding, more staffed welcome desks, an accessible outdoor greenspace, and what officials call “same-floor care continuums” meaning closely located groupings of related services and medical teams.
As for the medical services provided, the site will include a dedicated pediatric surgical center, diagnostic imaging including PET scanning technology and MRIs, an infusion center and other specialty clinics and cancer care, as well as 29 emergency department exam rooms, including four flex rooms and an additional four behavioral-health dedicated rooms.
Kitten scanner and ‘safe space’ play zone
The design also incorporates elements to help soothe children’s anxieties to take some of the edge off being in a medical setting facing unknown procedures.
One of those features is the addition of what the officials called a “kitten” scanner, a downsized simulation model of a full-sized CT (CAT) scan machine that performs computerized, detailed scanned images.
“It’s like a CAT scan, but it’s scaled down,” explained Whitworth. “So a stuffed animal can go through the machine, and it’s like a simulation for the children. They can see and experience a simulation of what that would be like for their little stuffed animal, and they can have a little bit of understanding.”
The goal is to reduce the need for sedation for children for procedures otherwise not requiring sedation but still requiring stillness instead of anxious wiggles.
“If we think of all the hassle of like not being able to eat or drink anything before sedation, and for a child, how impactful that is, and then the recovery and the disorientation,” said Whitworth. “If we can reduce that need for a child, that’s a benefit in a program like this, where we have specialists that do this all day, every day. They can help use a simulator like this kitten scanner to help reduce anxiety and the need for sedation.”
Oversized single-patient rooms will include pullout sofa beds for families and digital interaction via in-room tablets and TVs to ease ordering of food and seeing images of their care team for that day, They also can access the patient’s MyChart records and information.
“The hospital is not like a hotel, so the digital system is connected in to make sure it checks for allergies and checks for the particular diet that the doctor may have ordered for them,” Whitworth noted.
A playroom on the fourth floor, surrounded by large windows and views of Commencement Bay, also is in the works.
“This is a place for kids to get out of their room,” said Poltawsky. “The rules are, you can’t get poked with a needle here, it’s a safe space, and no procedures can be done.”
Whitworth shared a story that tied the onsite construction crew with the hospital’s past and future work. MultiCare hosted an event for “several hundred” of the workers with the American Heart Association, “to focus on their safety, not just on the job site, but in general, their health,” he said.
“I asked the workers to raise their hands if they had a family member or a loved one in their life that had been a patient at Mary Bridge.,” he said. “And half the audience raised their hand and knew somebody that had been there.”
More information and updates on the construction is available at the Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital project page online.
This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
