UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh is looking to build an addition at its Lawrenceville campus to house its growing Heart Institute.

Hospital leaders presented plans Tuesday to the city’s Planning Commission that showed a 50,000-square-foot addition atop an existing parking structure.

Diane Hupp, the hospital’s president, said the new addition is needed to accommodate the growing Heart Institute and new technology that has become available.

“Our patients in the city and beyond are looking to us to deliver extraordinary care,” Hupp said.

The institute includes care for children, as well as an adult congenital heart program.

Plans call for a three-story structure that would link to the rest of the hospital through a connecting bridge, according to Kyle Wiessman, an architect with the Minnesota-based design firm HGA.

The proposed space would include inpatient and outpatient procedural and diagnostic spaces, conference areas and waiting and reception rooms, the plans showed.

There would be no impact on the current helipad flight path, according to UPMC’s plans.

Wiessman said the addition would “align to the existing campus,” tying in the primary colors seen on the rest of the building’s exterior.

Officials said about 50 parking spots would be lost in the construction. The hospital would open up 88 patient and visitor spots at a separate employee parking garage on the hospital’s campus.

Displaced employees would be able to park a 1,400-space, off-campus lot that is typically only half-full, officials said. Shuttles would run between the lot and the hospital.

The project is expected to take about two years to complete, according to Shawn McCloskey, UPMC’s project director of construction. He said the hospital wants to start construction late this year and open the facility by December 2025.

UPMC officials did not offer an estimate of how much the project would cost.

The Planning Commission is expected to vote on the proposal at its next meeting in two weeks.

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