The Sarasota County Public Hospital Board on Monday authorized Sarasota Memorial staff to move forward with construction of a new 7-story Cancer Pavilion on Waldemere Street. Preliminary plans also call for an adjacent parking garage and skybridge connecting the pavilion to the oncology tower SMH opened on its Sarasota campus last November. The pavilion will be the third in a series of premier facilities that are part of the health system’s expanding Brian D. Jellison Cancer Institute. Responding to the rising number of local cancer cases and the complexity of modern cancer care delivery, the health system launched its comprehensive cancer program in 2018 to give cancer patients, caregivers and medical providers access to the latest treatments, technologies, clinical trials and supportive care in their own community. Site work on the $220 million Cancer Pavilion is slated to begin later this year, pending regulatory permits and approvals. Conceptual plans feature a 7-story, 200,000-square-foot facility on the north side of Waldemere Street, steps away from the Jellison Cancer Institute Oncology Tower. To make room for the pavilion and parking garage with about 700 spaces, SMH plans to demolish the existing Cape Outpatient Surgery Center and smaller SMH-owned building on the southwest corner of Floyd Street and U.S 41. As part of a planned, phased approach with the recent opening of the Oncology Tower, SMH will temporarily transition outpatient surgeries currently being performed at the Cape to existing operating rooms in the hospital during construction. Outpatient surgeries will resume in the Cancer Pavilion once operational. SMH selected EYP Architects and Turner Construction/J2 Solutions to design and build the new facility. When complete, the pavilion will house a new breast health center, outpatient surgery suites, radiation oncology, infusion services, diagnostic imaging, and integrative and supportive care. The Cancer Pavilion also will be home to medical, surgical and radiation oncology physician clinics, said medical oncologist Richard Brown, MD, who serves as the Institute's chief program medical director and oversees a team of more than 90 specialists caring for local cancer patients.