Children's Hospital to build $132 million building

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the oldest hospital dedicated solely to pediatric care in the United States, unveiled plans last month to build a $132 million research complex. The new complex will house the Joseph Stokes, Jr. Research Institute, which is named after a former CHOP researcher who "organized a full-time pediatric surgical service . . . was instrumental in heading up expanding research, [and brought] modern scientific medicine to CHOP," said CHOP Spokesperson Jackie Kozloski. The 13-story building will be located at the former site of the Philadelphia General Hospital. CHOP is located next to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania on 33rd Street. According to Kosloski, CHOP officials are "extremely excited" about the new building because it will allow for extensive research and will create many new jobs. "It will bring 650 onsight and 350 offsight construction jobs," Kozloski said. "[And the building will] result in 500 new jobs which will increase the CHOP workforce to 3500 employees." CHOP officials said the building will be able to accomodate around 120 researchers and their research teams, in addition to serving as a training ground for University students in the Medical School. The researchers' work will include fields such as metabolism, molecular genetics, infectious diseases and neurosciences. Within these fields, researchers will study a wide variety of medical conditions often found in children, including mental retardation, cancer and leukemia. "We're taking medical treatment to a different level where we will be able to detect and treat disease at its most basic level -- at the genetic level," said Pat Rocci, a spokesperson for CHOP. "Our research is heading towards looking at the genetic source of disease [so] we can look at the broad range of problems which affect children." Rocci added that the building will provide a better working environment for the hospital's researchers. "People will be able to work with fewer interruptions which come from being a part of another institution," he said. "The way the space will be set up in the building . . . will encourage people who work in different disciplines to interact with each other." The building is being paid for through a series of grants, including a $10 million federal grant to pay for the study of genes on chromosome 22 in children. The construction on the new building is expected to begin in early 1993 and be completed sometime in 1995.