An 1891 Central of Georgia Railway steam locomotive will stand outside the new Erlanger Children's Hospital outpatient building at Third and Palmetto streets.
A retired Chattanooga fire engine will be on the second floor, and a pink tow truck will greet patients and their families on the third floor.
The train, fire engine and tow truck are fun - and locally-inspired - touches that are trademarks of Bruce Komiske, Erlanger's vice president of new hospital design and construction.
Komiske has spent his career building children's hospitals around the country, including the 23-story Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago that he said is the tallest in the country.
Erlangerճ Vice President of New Hospital Design and Construction Bruce Komiske, Erlanger's Chief Development officer and President Julie Taylor, and Erlanger's Chief Executive Officer for Childrenճ Hospital Don Mueller pose for a photo Tuesday, June 6, 2017, during the ground breaking ceremony at the site for the new Erlanger Children's Hospital on Third Street in Chattanooga, Tenn. The $40 million, three-story building on the corner of Third and Palmetto streets is scheduled to open in 18 months. He's part of trio that's spearheading the effort to build the new children's hospital here, along with Don Mueller, CEO of Erlanger Children's Hospital, and Julie Taylor, Erlanger's Chief Development Officer and president of the Erlanger Health Systems Foundations.
Fundraising - at least on the scale required to build the new $40 million, three-story children's outpatient hospital - is new to Erlanger, which is governed by the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Hospital Authority Board.
"People perceived it as a government hospital - why should I give?" Komiske says.
But that's changed with the effort to construct the new children's hospital, which has gotten 28,000 donations from 4,500 donors, ranging from small checks and hospital employees' paycheck deductions to five gifts of more than $1 million each. The big donations include $1 million from Olan Mills II and his wife, Norma, and an anonymous gift of $4 million.
"Until this campaign, we'd never received gifts of this magnitude," Taylor says.
Fun, local touches
Komiske's trademark is to add fun, local touches at each children's hospital that he's worked on. For example, Chicago's Shedd Aquarium donated fiberglass sculptures of a humpback whale mother and her calf to hang inside the entrance of Lurie Children's Hospital.
The steam locomotive, on permanent loan from the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, will stand outside the entrance to Erlanger Children's Hospital, while the interior will feature such decorations as hang gliders used to fly off Lookout Mountain, and a pink "girl" tow truck donated by the International Towing & Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum. Rock City donated $300,000 for an outdoor secret garden to be visible from Third Street on a second-floor rooftop.
"You don't want a generic hospital," Komiske says. "These are fun things that kids like that the community loves to contribute."
Mueller says that making a hospital visit fun for a child is an important part of medical care.
"Remember going to the doctor when you were a kid? You kicked your mom because you didn't want to go," he says. "We want kids to get used to a children's hospital that has toys and games, things to play on. It lowers their anxiety and makes it easier to treat them."
Komiske said that the locomotive, fire engine and tow truck are all donated. That's been the case at other children's hospitals he's worked on. Local organizations, institutions and business step forward with donated items, such as fire trucks.
"There's no downside; it doesn't cost more," Komiske says.
The fun stuff also is a way to generate interest in the outpatient building, which will be highly visible from Third Street. The idea is that will make the next fundraising effort easier: Once the outpatient children's hospital is built, Erlanger hopes to build an inpatient children's hospital connected to it that could cost several hundred million dollars.
Wrote the book on children's hospitals
Community involvement is key in designing a children's hospital, Komiske said.
"The more people involved in the planning of a project, the higher the likelihood you will have a successful project," he says.
He tried something new about two years ago in Chattanooga to pick the construction manager and architect for the hospital once the field had been narrowed down to two finalists from an initial two dozen applicants. Erlanger rented the Imax Theater at the Tennessee Aquarium and had the finalists make presentations to an audience of more than 300 people.
"It was the way I would always do it now," says Komiske, who says he has learned new techniques with every hospital project.
You could even say Komiske has written the book on building children's hospitals - because he has. Komiske is the editor and creator of a series of coffee table books titled "Designing the World's Best Children's Hospitals" in cooperation with the National Association of Children's Hospitals.
Komiske was hired about three years ago by Kevin Spiegel, who was hired in 2013 as Erlanger Health System's CEO. They had worked together at the Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York, on the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital, which has a 100-ton, 55-foot-long diesel locomotive outside of it.
"Bruce is awesome," Taylor says. "He's a wonderful team player, and we have a fabulous team."
Taylor came in for praise for her fundraising efforts at the June 6 groundbreaking for the new children's hospital outpatient building. Taylor's initiatives include a fundraising gala, the Believe Bash, a black-tie event in April that drew some 900 people to the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport and raised more than a half million dollars.
"Julie, you have done a fantastic job," Dr. Alan Kohrt, the children's hospital's chief medical officer, said during his turn at the podium before a crowd of hundreds of people. "[Previously] there was no culture of philanthropy at Erlanger."