See photos of the MARC then and now
Nearly 15 years after the Medical Arts and Research Building opened for business, the eight-story, 286,000-square-foot facility with a 645-space parking garage, has become one of the busiest clinical locations for UT Health San Antonio.
“The MARC Building has been a signature project for UT Health San Antonio for the past 15 years,” said Michael Charlton, PhD, vice president and chief facility planning officer, Facilities and Capital Planning. “The project goal of bringing together the many smaller remote clinics into one cohesive home has been achieved in innumerable ways. The MARC Building project has been a major success for UT Health San Antonio and one that I hope everyone can appreciate.”
The building was proposed in 2004 by then president of UT Health San Antonio, Francisco Cigarro, MD, who currently serves as the acting dean of the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine and director of the Alvarez Center for Transplantation Hepatobiliary Surgery and Innovation. The vision was to bring the university’s medical practices to a convenient, central location.
The building’s design and planning took about two years, with excavation starting in 2007.
Patrick Lew, AIA, director, Capital Projects, said the infrastructure was challenging to design in certain instances like accommodating the latest technologies for medical imaging. In those cases, final decisions were not made until after the initial design stage and well into construction. “Although it’s a challenge, advancements in medical equipment sometimes necessitate selections late in construction,” Lew said.
Other factors that impacted construction were rain-out days, rising costs and supply shortages. Initially, the eighth floor of the building was planned as a shell to help control costs. However, due to the team’s efficient budgeting, the entire floor was able to be completed.
The building was completed in November 2009 and the MARC opened for business the following month. The entire project cost $101.85 million.
The building was designed to provide a healing environment with a lot of natural light. With patient convenience in mind, exam rooms were situated to allow the different clinics to flex between each other depending on demand.
The wall running along the expanse of the first-floor reception areas was painted “toasted chestnut” to reflect San Antonio culture and to this day, winning artwork from a photography contest held when the building first opened, is displayed throughout the building.
Walter Stone, senior project coordinator with UT Health Physicians Facility Management, remembered the day the MARC Building opened.
“It was all new furniture, all new equipment, so it was a good day,” he said. “It was like a new car … It was special to move in there,” he said.
The new building provided new state-of-the art equipment that had been installed, with Stone’s team placing furniture throughout the building and figuring out workflows, he said.
Located at 8300 Floyd Curl Drive, the first six floors of the building housed multi-disciplinary clinics, an ambulatory surgery center, diagnostic imaging, a wellness center, amenities such-as retail, dining and conference facilities and more.
The seventh and eighth floors housed office and administrative spaces. In 2015, Facilities Management renovated the two upper floors for clinical use.
Today, the MARC location offers 28 specialties with over 75 subspecialties.
New Center for Brain Health will connect to the MARC
Construction on the $100 million Center for Brain Health next to the MARC is currently underway. The center — a new patient care and clinical trials facility of UT Health San Antonio — is now about 65% complete, with full completion expected by September 2025 and an anticipated opening in December 2025.
The center will connect to the MARC via the west exterior plaza. There will also be an enclosed glassed-in corridor between the two buildings to accommodate patient and staff access.
The Center for Brain Health is among $1 billion in capital investments undertaken by UT Health San Antonio over the next four years, including the UT Health San Antonio Multispecialty and Research Hospital opening this December.