RSMeans Costing Information – Hospitals, Nursing Home and Apartment Building – November 2006

Alex Carrick -- December 4, 2006

Among the four structure types shown in the table, a two- to three-story hospital has the highest dollar-per-square-foot construction cost, followed by a four- to eight-story hospital, then an apartment building (8 to 24 stories) and nursing home. Regionally, the highest construction-cost cities are generally large, well-populated urban areas headed by New York and followed by San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Detroit (although geography plays a factor in Alaska, which has the highest costs of all). Among the 25 major cities shown in the table, six of the seven lowest construction-cost centers are in the south — Winston-Salem, Dallas, New Orleans, Miami, Houston and Atlanta. The other low-cost center is Phoenix. As a point of comparison, the cost spread between the lower cost centers and the more expensive cities is about +33% on average, ranging as high as +65%.