San Diego, California

Sharp Rees-Stealy Kearny Mesa

Transforming an aging office campus into a centralized, high-performance medical destination

Sharp Rees-Stealy Kearny Mesa is a 96,000-square-foot adaptive reuse project that transforms a 1980s office park into a comprehensive outpatient medical campus. Located within the former Balboa Tech Center, the project consolidates multiple Sharp Rees-Stealy clinics into a single, highly accessible location with advanced imaging, primary and specialty care, physical therapy, pediatrics, and pharmacy services.

The project responds to Sharp’s long-standing goal to create a centrally-located outpatient hub that expands access to high-acuity imaging and reduces travel time for patients and staff. Balancing precise program requirements with the constraints of aging infrastructure, a complex site, and an aggressive schedule, the new facility extends the useful life of an existing commercial asset into a unified, patient-centered campus that elevates care delivery for central San Diego County.

Client Sharp Healthcare
Market Healthcare
Services Architecture, Interior Design
Scope Adaptive Reuse
Size 94,988 Square Feet
Key Project Contacts Bradley Stech, Scott Bales

Sharp Kearny Mesa - Exterior — Sharp Rees-Stealy sought to establish a centrally located outpatient facility capable of consolidating services from multiple satellite clinics across San Diego County, while avoiding the complex entitlement process of a new ground-up development. The Balboa Tech Center presented both opportunity and challenge. While ideally located near major transportation corridors, the campus was never designed for medical use. Limited on-site parking at the front of the complex, a difficult-to-navigate rear parking garage, disconnected structures, and continuous patient traffic patterns posed significant operational and patient-experience challenges.

Turning Unknowns into Opportunities

Alongside Sharp Rees-Stealy and McCarthy Building, Cuningham lead a rigorous due diligence phase to fully understand the site’s zoning, infrastructure, and existing structural systems—each factor carrying implications for both opportunity and constraint.

By identifying complexities upfront, the team was able to plan targeted interventions and create detailed phasing strategies that preserved schedule integrity and minimized surprises during construction.

Sharp Kearny Mesa — Early investigations into the Balboa Tech Center’s as-built documentation, supported by laser scanning and BIM modeling, revealed irregular column grids, mixed structural systems, and MEP challenges that would have major impacts on program requirements.

Sharp Kearny - Patient Bridge — To address the site’s parking challenges, the team designed and located a new exterior elevator tower outside of the existing building’s footprint. With pedestrian bridges connecting it to both the rear parking garage and the clinical floors, this design intervention removes confusion, shortens travel distances, and frees interior space for care delivery.

Sharp kearny Mesa patient drop off — A new circulation strategy centered around a covered patient drop-off between the buildings allows vehicles to loop through the site rather than forcing patients back onto a busy arterial road, significantly improving safety and arrival clarity.