A year and a half after breaking ground, a multi-billion-dollar hospital tower has reached a key construction milestone. St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Cos. topped out the $3.7 billion California Tower on Feb. 6, according to a news release from UC Davis Health.
McCarthy broke ground on the project in 2024. The project’s contract is a progressive design-build delivery method. The tower is part of a doubling of UC Davis’ Sacramento campus over eight years, which is the largest health system capital expansion in the U.S. today, according to the release.
Once complete, the 14-story hospital and five-story pavilion will include operating rooms, an imaging center and new facilities for existing pharmacy and burn care units. In addition, the tower will also add roughly 334 inpatient beds.
Stakeholders in the project gathered to sign the beam in the common tradition before its ceremonial placement as a celebration of the milestone. UC Davis Health expects to open the California Tower in 2030.
The building is the last piece of UC Davis Health’s Vision 2030 plan, which will see the campus expand from 3.6 million square feet of building space to more than 7 million square feet, according to the release.
Other projects on the UC Davis Health’s Sacramento campus include the $253 million Central Utility Plant Expansion. Tutor Perini announced in December that its subsidiary Rudolph and Sletten won the contract to build the two-story, 32,000-square-foot building.
This isn’t the only recent healthcare project milestone for McCarthy. In December, the contractor completed work on the Plaza West Tower at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.
Data center builds continue to account for most of construction’s health as other sectors see softer demand. Healthcare construction, however, contributed to overall growth in construction planning at the end of 2025, according to the Dodge Momentum Index. Nonetheless, Dodge’s first report of 2026 indicated a slowdown in healthcare project planning to begin the year.
