The new medical office building on Hospital Hill will create more room to treat more patients.

Truman Medical Centers will build a $70 million medical office building on Hospital Hill, according to documents from Kansas City's Plan Commission.

A staff report showed plans to construct a four-story building at the intersection of 22nd and Charlotte streets, just south of Truman Medical Centers' University Health. The Plan Commission approved the project July 3.

Truman spokeswoman Leslie Carto confirmed that the building would host primary-care and women's health services. Dubbed "University Health II," it will be connected to Truman's Hospital Hill campus via a skybridge. Construction is expected to begin in October.

"People will see a building that doesn't look like a medical office building," Truman CEO Charlie Shields told the Kansas City Business Journal. "It has large glass features and is going to be a beautiful building."

At 129,000 square feet, the planned building will be nearly the same size as University Health, an outpatient care building constructed in 2015 for $29 million. The new building will be at the site of the old Felix Building, which once housed Truman's behavioral health services but has been vacant more than five years.

Demolition of the Felix Building began a month ago, according to a video shared by Truman Medical. The health system also will demolish a parking garage at 2301 Holmes St. and rebuild a three-story parking garage in its place.

The project is divided into two phases, with the first including 80,000 square feet and 320 parking spaces. The first phase also will include a Walgreens pharmacy location and a coffee shop on the second floor. The facility can be expanded to 129,000 square feet in a second phase by building over an adjacent surface lot.

By moving women's health and primary care, Truman will have more space on its Hospital Hill campus to expand its birthing center and neonatal ICU. The latter will grow from 19 beds to 28 beds. That effort will begin in June 2019.

"We've been working on plans for at least two years," Shields said. "Within the main hospital ... frankly, we need more patient rooms. We need to expand our NICU, and we need to refresh our mother and baby floor at the same time."

The new building also will allot more space in the main hospital for an undetermined number of inpatient rooms, Shields said.

In 2013, Truman Medical Centers sold four buildings to Children's Mercy, with plans to use the proceeds to renovate the Felix Building. Hospital leadership originally planned to use that building to house the hospital's IT and call center staff.

"If you look at everything that's happening in the UMKC Health Sciences District, between what Truman is doing and what Children's Mercy is doing, it's a pretty exciting time to see that growth in this core of Kansas City," Shields said. "People should be excited about the health resources that are going to be available in the middle of this community."

The hospital also hoped to set aside enough money from the Children's Mercy sale to create an outpatient surgery building on Hospital Hill, which it achieved with the opening of University Health three years ago.

St. Louis-based CannonDesign will be the architect, and Lenexa-based Henderson Engineers and Kansas City-based Taliaferro & Browne Inc. provided engineering for the project. Truman hasn't yet chosen a general contractor.