Case Study // Sustainability as a Catalyst for Community Renewal
Kristi Ennis
4 min read
In the heart of San Bernardino, a city rebuilding from bankruptcy and decades of disinvestment, the Loma Linda University Health San Bernardino Campus was born from an unusual kind of partnership—one built not around a single institution, but around a shared urgency to restore opportunity. Loma Linda University Health, SAC Health System, local government agencies, school districts, community colleges, and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians came together to create a 151,000-square-foot campus where healthcare, education, workforce training and community services operate as one interconnected system.
Rather than simply serving as a medical clinic, the project was conceived as civic infrastructure: a place where healing, learning, and economic mobility reinforce one another. As San Bernardino County Fifth District Supervisor Josie Gonzales reflected, “Bringing forward this facility means hope and a restoration of life’s opportunities for the people of this county.”
That vision begins at the front door. The campus delivers comprehensive care through SAC Health System – the largest specialty-based and Teaching Health Center (THC) FQHC in the nation. Offering primary care, dental, ophthalmology, OB/GYN services, insurance enrollment assistance, and connections to social services for an underserved population, their affiliation with Loma Linda University Health further provides patients with access to world-class care in over 35 medical and surgical specialties.
But the facility’s focus extends beyond the patients, to include caregivers of all kinds. San Manuel Gateway College partners with providers to offer students real life experience for careers as nursing assistants, dental assistants, phlebotomists, pharmacy technicians, and medical coders, creating direct pathways from education into stable employment. Meanwhile, medical residents from Loma Linda University School of Medicine also train here, strengthening a long-term pipeline of providers committed to community-based care.
For many students, this pathway represents more than education. It represents possibility. As Dr. Dale Marsden, Superintendent of the San Bernardino City Unified School District, shared, “Many of our students come from homes of poverty. They’re traditionally marginalized in most systems. But here, we’re making them whole. We’re giving them an opportunity to have access to something they would have never had access to before—access to hope.”
SAC Health’s unique model of patient-centered, whole-person care offers the ability to integrate behavioral health specialists, dieticians, clinical pharmacists, social workers, and even a chaplain within the same office visit if needed. Recognizing that health outcomes are shaped as much by stability as by medicine, the on-site Community Resource Center meets people at moments of immediate need, connecting families with housing assistance, food resources, utilities support, and healthcare navigation.
But before any of these programs could take root, the land itself had to be healed.
The project began with the remediation of an asbestos-contaminated industrial site, transforming a brownfield into a place of growth and public value. Today, the site supports edible and medicinal demonstration gardens. Corn, squash, peppers, and tomatoes grow beside educational signage and both indoor and outdoor classrooms for community programming, while medicinal plants such as Australian tea tree and St. John’s wort envelop the patio of the vegetarian bistro. Together the gardens turn everyday activity into a lesson in the relationship between food systems, environment, and health.
Caring for people also means caring for the resources on which their future depends. Southern California's prolonged drought demanded that the campus respect the limits of its environment while still creating a welcoming place for the community to gather and heal. Drought-tolerant landscapes, efficient irrigation, and high-performance plumbing fixtures work quietly in the background, reducing potable water use by more than one million gallons each year.
That same philosophy shaped the experience inside the building. Long before a patient meets with a physician or a student step into a classroom, the environment itself is working to support their well-being. Fresh air circulates at rates exceeding code requirements by at least 30%, while low-emitting materials, green cleaning practices, and integrated pest management help create healthier spaces for all who enter.
As San Bernardino continues to rebuild, the campus has become an investment in both people and place. It created approximately 250 healthcare, educational, and administrative jobs while expanding access to clinical care, workforce training, and community resources—strengthening the city's capacity to support its residents today and for years to come.
The transformation is profound: a once-contaminated industrial site now serves as a hub for healing, learning, and opportunity. By pairing environmental stewardship with community investment, the Loma Linda University Health San Bernardino Campus demonstrates that sustainability is most powerful when it advances equity, health, and community life, turning a building into a long-term investment in the future of a city.
