Nationwide Children's Hospital announced on Wednesday that Big Lots is giving $50 million to support its planned behavioral health expansion. The company's donation will help support the construction of an approximately 250,000-square-foot behavioral health treatment and research pavilion on the hospital's main campus on the South Side.

Nationwide Children's Hospital announced on Wednesday that Big Lots is giving $50 million to support its planned behavioral health expansion.

The company's donation will help support the construction of an approximately 250,000-square-foot behavioral health treatment and research pavilion on the hospital's main campus on the South Side.

Big Lots' donation follows a $15 million gift from Ann and John F. Wolfe, the former owner and publisher of The Dispatch who died in June. Mrs. Wolfe is a co-chairwoman of the "Be the Reason" campaign.

In June, Nationwide Children's Hospital officials announced a massive expansion that will cost $730 million and transform the patch of campus west of Parsons Avenue.

They made a similar announcement a decade ago: a more than $700 million expansion of the campus southeast of Downtown that included a new, 12-story main hospital east of Parsons. That helped vault Children's, which handles 1.3 million patient visits a year, into a spot among the nation's top pediatric hospitals, officials said.

The plans for the latest expansion include some previously announced projects that are under construction, including a five-story, $115 million outpatient-care center at Grant and Livingston avenues (opening next summer) and a six-story, $45 million office building at Livingston and Parsons avenues that opened in June.

The most lauded piece of the plan is the Behavioral Health Pavilion, a comprehensive center devoted to mental-health care for children and adolescents. Few cities have centers that compare, especially one on the main campus of a children's hospital.

The building, which will cost nearly $160 million, is scheduled to open in 2020 with 48 inpatient beds. The center will serve patients in crisis but also will aim to train care providers, stimulate research and connect with community resources that serve children with mental illnesses.

Children's officials said the behavioral health program and the pavilion will carry the Big Lots name.