A Vancouver couple have donated $12 million to Oregon Health & Science University for a new, five-story patient and family guesthouse under construction on OHSU’s South Waterfront Campus in Portland.
The building will be named the Gary and Christine Rood Family Pavilion after the couple, who are longtime residents of Clark County. Scheduled to open in 2018 adjacent to OHSU’s expanding Center for Health and Healing, the 76-unit facility will provide temporary lodging for up to 3,000 patients, families and caregivers annually who must travel long distances to use OHSU’s services.
The Roods have been involved in administering and managing health and senior care projects for more than 25 years. Today they own 30 senior housing and commercial real estate properties, including The Quarry Senior Living and Glenwood Place Senior Living in Vancouver.
Gary Rood previously spent 20 years as a hospital administrator, including at OHSU and as president of Mid-Columbia Medical Center in The Dalles, Ore.
During his tenure at OHSU in the 1960s and 1970s, “I saw families and patients who needed this type of guest housing facility on a daily basis,” Gary Rood said in a prepared statement. “So it is extremely meaningful to Christine and me to be able to provide this level of support for a project that will serve thousands of children and adults each year and make hospital stays much less stressful for their families.”
OHSU President Dr. Joe Robertson said the Gary and Christine Rood Family Pavilion will be “an oasis of peace and healing.”
“We are so grateful to Gary and Christine for recognizing this community need and providing such a generous gift to help OHSU serve new patients and families for generations to come,” he said in a prepared statement.
Nearly half of OHSU’s adult and pediatric patients live in rural Oregon or neighboring states, and many struggle to find temporary housing while they travel to OHSU in Portland for treatments such as surgery, bone marrow transplants and clinical trials. OHSU negotiates special rates with local hotels, but that meets only a fraction of patient needs, the press release said.
The guesthouse building, which has a parking garage, will feature laundry facilities on each floor, indoor and outdoor play/relaxation spaces, a communal kitchen and dining room, exercise space, a conference center and space for a future urgent care center. The guesthouse will be unique in that it will host both adult and pediatric patients.
“It may be the first combined adult-pediatric guesthouse in the nation — we know of no other,” OHSU spokeswoman Tamara Hargens-Bradley said.
The Center for Health and Healing South Building Project is a $349 million, 750,000-square-foot building project with two buildings: a 14-story health care facility and a 10-story mixed-use building that includes the five-floor patient guest house and above-ground parking. The first seven floors of the health care facility will be for invasive surgeries and procedural care. On the top floors, the Knight Cancer Institute will consolidate outpatient clinics, infusion and clinical trials space.
The guesthouse fundraising target is $40 million, Hargens-Bradley said.
The Roods had previously donated $1 million to endow a research professorship at the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute as part of the Knight Cancer Challenge.
