Robins & Morton, Thornton Start FIU Medical Center in West Miami-Dade

Florida International University and Baptist Health broke ground August 21 on the $162 million Helen and Jacob Shaham Academic Medical Center at FIU’s Modesto Maidique Campus in West Miami-Dade. Robins & Morton and Thornton Construction Company make up the construction management team, working from a design by architect Stantec, with completion targeted for 2028.

Why it matters

For contractors, the job is a rare South Florida award that pairs a teaching hospital’s programmatic complexity with an outpatient clinical building’s speed to revenue. The seven-story, 163,000-square-foot structure has to deliver medical education and interprofessional training space for FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine alongside multi-specialty outpatient care, diagnostic imaging, same-day surgery, infusion services and a pharmacy, all under one roof and one schedule. Pairing Robins & Morton, a national healthcare builder, with Thornton Construction, a Florida-based firm, mirrors how large academic medical center jobs increasingly get staffed here: a specialist joint-venture team rather than a single general contractor, spreading both bonding capacity and local subcontractor relationships across two firms.

The numbers

The building totals 163,000 square feet across seven stories for $162 million, or about $994 per square foot. RSMeans’ 2026 hospital construction guide puts a standard two- to three-story hospital shell at $439.85 to $454.33 per square foot nationally, meaning this job runs more than double that benchmark. The premium tracks with what the building actually holds: classrooms, simulation and training space layered into a functioning outpatient medical facility, plus MEP and structural scope from TLC Engineering Solutions and BNI Engineers rather than a stripped commercial shell. A $30 million philanthropic gift from Helen and Jacob Shaham, announced in April, is part of the funding stack alongside a state appropriation.

What’s next

FIU says the center will house 14 graduate medical education programs at opening, with a goal of growing to more than 350 residents and fellows within five years, meaning the building has to function as both a construction project and a clinical training pipeline from day one. For Robins & Morton and Thornton, hitting the 2028 target keeps FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and Baptist Health’s residency expansion on the timeline they announced at groundbreaking. The project adds to a South Florida healthcare construction pipeline that has leaned increasingly on outpatient and academic medical formats over standalone hospital towers.