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ZGF Architects garnered little from precedents when designing a seismically resilient, six-story, 183,000-square-foot hospital expansion in Astoria’s tsunami inundation zone.

鈥淎s far as the resiliency side of it, there isn’t a precedent for this kind of facility,鈥� project architect Michelle Checkis said. 鈥淎t least in the United States, we weren’t able to find another medical facility that was doing this or had this kind of resiliency.鈥�

Resiliency is paramount for Columbia Memorial Hospital, a federally designated Critical Access Hospital that is pinched between the Columbia River and Coxcomb Hill in Astoria. The hospital nearest to Columbia Memorial is 18 miles away in Seaside, and U.S. Route 101 between them is linked by seismically vulnerable bridges.

Now a major expansion is under way at Columbia Memorial. Crews led by general contractor Skanska are erecting steel.

鈥淲e’re getting out of the ground,鈥� Checkis said.

And, crucially, above water.

Columbia Memorial officials issued a request for proposals in July 2020 after a 2017 report on 11 coastal hospitals from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries reached an alarming conclusion: 鈥淒ue to expected damage to pre-1995 hospital buildings including structural systems and non-structural components of hospital buildings 鈥� none of Oregon’s coastal hospitals are ready to operate immediately after a Cascadia disaster.鈥�

Columbia Memorial was built in the 1970s and later received several expansions. Hospital officials worked with University of Washington researchers to precisely model the effects of a tsunami in the area. The results: The bottom two floors of Columbia Memorial are expected to be inundated in a worst-case earthquake and tsunami.

So ZGF 鈥� with the help of Degenkolb Engineers 鈥� went vertical. Building on lessons learned from the Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building in Newport, ZGF designed a staircase leading to a rooftop shelter. Overall, safe refuge areas at the hospital expansion will be able to protect up to 1,900 people, ZGF estimates.

Acute patient care rooms were moved to higher floors, except for the emergency department, which must remain on the ground floor for everyday access. The greatly expanded emergency department will meet a crucial need for more ER capacity on the North Coast.

Also, mechanical and electrical systems are located above the projected maximum tsunami inundation line. So is a rooftop helipad; it replaces a landing spot at ground level, only 20 feet above the grade of the Columbia River.

A swooping mass-timber entry pavilion provides an entry to the existing hospital structure and a nod to Clatsop County’s timber heritage.

Perhaps the project’s biggest hurdle came in April 2025 when Trump administration officials canceled a previously awarded $20 million resiliency grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The status of the 2023 grant remains unclear. In March, FEMA sent the state Department of Emergency Management a letter indicating it could still be funded.

Meanwhile, the hospital’s foundation has raised nearly $8 million of a $10 million goal to support completion of construction.

Hospital officials 鈥渉ave stayed hopeful that the grant program would be revived, while also searching for other avenues of funding, as well as cost savings in the project,鈥� hospital spokeswoman Sarah Bello stated in an email. 鈥淭here have been no major design changes, and the resiliency aspects remain part of the expansion despite the uncertainty with the BRIC grant.鈥�

On the Boards is a 91视频 feature offering a look at projects in Oregon and Southwest Washington being tackled by local architecture firms. To have your firm’s projects considered, contact the 91视频 at [email protected].