Cornerstone Ceremony Brings Hundreds of Shriners In Celebration of New Pasadena Childrens Medical Center

Hundreds of Shriners from all over the United States – outfitted in their iconic burgundy fez headwear — flocked to the two acre site of the nearly completed Shriners for Children Medical Center on South Fair Oaks Avenue at Hurlburt Street to celebrate the state of the art facility with a traditional Shriners cornerstone ceremony.

The new 75,000 square foot medical center located immediately south of the Huntington Memorial Hospital will replace the Shriners aging 65-year-old Children’s Hospital in LA’s Koreatown and will provide specialized resources supporting children’s health care services in areas of orthopaedics, burn care, spinal cord Injury, and cleft lip and palate — regardless of the family’s ability to pay.

“It’s a culmination of a ten year effort for us to build a new facility and we bring a $100 million project to the this community with the desire to help kids in need and to see that no child goes untreated.” said Shriners Hospitals for Children Board of Governors Chairman David Doan. “ It is just a fantastic feeling to have finally accomplished that and know that in this hospital, thousands of children will have their lives changed by the work of our doctors.”

To celebrate the transition from Los Angeles to Pasadena, the Los Angeles Shriners Hospital leadership, national and local patient ambassadors alongside the California Grand Lodge, Imperial Board and the Chairman of the Board perform a traditional cornerstone ceremony that is typically performed in private amongst members and is the symbolic laying of the cornerstone, which supports the entire structure.

Members also presented a time capsule that contained several newspaper pages from local publications dating back to 1950 when the Los Angeles hospital opened its doors.

“We all know children are precious and the truth is this entire medical center–this entire effort–is because of the children. The truth is that without children, our fundamental component of our mission for Shriners could not happen without children,” said Shriners Hospitals for Children Los Angeles Administrator Lou Lazatin.

The medical center will join 22 specialty Shriners pediatric centers across the nation.

“The San Gabriel Valley is lacking a specialty medical care for children here and so this is a very exciting obviously being in a new building for us,” said orthopedic surgeon Selina Poon.

The outpatient care facility will include an ambulatory surgical center to house Shriners Hospitals for Children Medical Center’s clinical, diagnostic, outpatient surgery and rehabilitation units, which will help bring exceptional specialty pediatric care to children and families in the greater Pasadena area and across the Southwest.

According to an earlier report, eighty-five percent of services provided by the Shriners Hospitals for Children occurs before and after surgery, which is a primary design element for the medical center.

“Having the Shriners back us and build us this beautiful, giving us the state of the art medical facility, equipment technologies for us to help our children is great. I’ve never had this happen and I am really looking forward to using all of this new stuff that they’re providing us and really helping the kids here,” Poon added.

Aside from the generous funding from Shriners, the $77 million facility was completed with the help from architectural firms that included L.A. based CO Architects and Portland based SRG Partnership with construction performed by BPR Construction.

“Because of children, it’s what we do, it’s who we are and it’s why we are here,” added Lazatin.