Riverside Community Hospital is getting a massive upgrade.
The Magnolia Avenue hospital in downtown Riverside will see a major expansion with the addition of an 11-story patient tower and parking structure to meet the Inland Empire’s growing health care needs, officials announced this month.
The tower will house the labor and delivery, postpartum and antepartum and radiology departments, plus a pharmacy and endoscopy suite. It will have 220 medical-surgical beds and 54 intensive-care beds, a hospital news release states. Three floors of the tower will hold future patient rooms and additional operating rooms.
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An artist’s rendering shows the inside of the new patient tower at Riverside Community Hospital. A $912 million expansion will include the 11-story tower. (Courtesy of HCA Healthcare)
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An artist’s rendering shows the inside of the new patient tower at Riverside Community Hospital. A $912 million expansion will include the 11-story tower. (Courtesy of HCA Healthcare)
“This expansion marks an incredible milestone for the city of Riverside and the communities we serve,” hospital CEO Peter Hemstead said in the release. “Our region is under bedded. This new tower will not only enhance our ability to meet the growing needs of our patients but also ensure this community has access to the highest standard of care, now and in the future.”
Hemstead cited state Public Health Department research, which reports just over one (1.63) bed for every 1,000 people in the Inland Empire — well below the national average of less than 2.35 hospital beds per 1,000 people, according to research from analysts Trilliant Health.
“As the demand for quality care continues to grow, this expansion ensures that our residents will have access to the resources, specialists, and support they deserve — right here at home,” Riverside City Councilmember Philip Falcone said in the release.
Hospital spokesperson Cassandra Jones said the cost of the expansion — including the 459,496-square-foot tower, parking structure, emergency room entrance redesign and new campus driveways — will be about $912 million.
The tower will be built on the site of the hospital’s current parking garage, parallel to the hospital’s seven-story patient G Tower, Jones said. When the new parking structure — on which construction already has started — is completed in December 2026, the former parking area will be demolished.
Groundbreaking for the new tower is set for winter, Jones said.
Since 2021, Riverside Community Hospital has completed several overhauls that invested $79 million into the facility, officials said.
The projects include several expansions to its emergency room department, a 35-bed inpatient unit, expanding its neonatal ICU and telemetry unit, adding imaging technology to include three CT scans, MRI and X-ray machines, renovating its cardiac catheterization laboratories, surgical ICU department and the ER trauma bay area.
Hemstead said the latest tower will meet California’s “stringent seismic standards,” which mandate that hospitals upgrade facilities by 2030 to withstand earthquake activity and remain operational.
“A new inpatient building allows us to have an earthquake-safe hospital operational sooner than a remodel of our older towers and, most importantly, allows us to have a facility with a longer lifespan than our current aging hospital,” he said. “This expansion is part of our broader commitment to deliver safer, smarter and more comprehensive care.”
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