CCU Health and Human Performance Building, Conway, South Carolina

Coastal Carolina University has started construction on its Health and Human Performance Building, an 85,000-square-foot, roughly $75 million academic building in Conway, South Carolina, and the largest construction project in the school’s history. It will pull nursing, health sciences, public health, exercise and sport science, physical therapy and the university’s ROTC program into one three-story building. The university expects to open it in fall 2028.

The building will carry Conway Medical Center’s name. The college it houses is the Conway Medical Center College of Health and Human Performance, and the regional health system gave $10 million toward the project.

Project Scope

The building got bigger before it got started. In December 2025, CCU’s board of trustees added 21,000 square feet to the original design, taking it to 85,000 square feet, and raised the planning and construction budget by $21.9 million to about $75 million. The state’s August 2025 solicitation for a construction manager at risk put the construction cost range at $40 million to $42 million, before that expansion, so the hard-cost number has likely moved since.

Hood Construction is the construction manager. Flad Architects handled programming, design and interiors, with Garvin Design Group as architect of record and interior designer. RMF Engineering has MEP, Weatherly Structural Engineers has structure, and ADC Engineering has civil and landscape architecture. The project is targeting Two Green Globes certification.

The program mixes classrooms, teaching labs, clinical space and offices, along with a health clinic for students, faculty and staff. A 400-space parking garage is part of the same state project. The building goes on the site of CCU’s track and field facility, which gets rebuilt across U.S. 501 at the Atlantic Center next to the existing tennis, soccer and beach volleyball complexes. The board approved up to $13 million for that relocation.

Why It Matters

Nursing schools across the Southeast are capacity-limited by clinical and simulation space, not by applicant demand. Putting nursing next to exercise science and public health, with a working clinic in the building, is the model most regional universities are chasing.

Funding is local. Beyond the Conway Medical Center gift, the project draws on Horry County’s one-cent sales tax for education. With Grand Strand population growth driving demand for healthcare workers, the county is effectively paying to train its own workforce. At roughly $75 million, it’s also a sizable CMAR job for a regional university.

Project Team & Details