SALEM Hospital expansion, renovation near completion
The public will get a chance to examine the project during an open house set for early next year.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
SALEM -- It's been more than two years since Salem Community Hospital embarked on a nearly $15.1 million expansion and improvement project, and the construction dust is about to settle soon.
Hospital officials expect to complete the undertaking in about a month, said Michele Hoffmeister, hospital spokeswoman.
"We are 90 percent complete," Hoffmeister said. "We're on target, and we're on budget."
Construction crews are primarily occupied with applying finishing touches such as painting, and installing wallpaper and tile and carpet.
Once construction workers leave in mid-December, there still remains the weeks-long task of moving in equipment and furniture and other items necessary to make new areas operational, Hoffmeister explained.
The public will get its first glimpse of the interior work at an open house the hospital is planning for Feb. 23.
Times are still being worked out, but the event is likely to be set for the afternoon and will include refreshments, tours and availability of staff to answer questions about the project, Hoffmeister said.
"We'll get to show people what's been going on behind the construction barriers," she added.
One part of the project has been completed for nearly a year.
Medical center
In December 2001, the hospital opened a 27,000-square-foot medical center that sits across East State Street from the hospital.
Accounting for nearly $4.7 million of the $15.1 million project, the three-story medical center includes a sleep lab and physical, occupational and sleep therapy clinics.
The center is linked to the main hospital with a new walkway that's suspended above East State Street.
The work being concluded now is being done on the original hospital.
That phase of the undertaking has entailed adding a three-story, 31,000-square-foot structure onto the front of the hospital, renovating the hospital's ground floor and reconfiguring the institution's front drive.
The work is providing space for an expanded endoscopy department, outpatient department, intensive coronary care unit, and lobby and registration area.
Hospital officials say this undertaking is one of the most ambitious in the institution's history.
The only larger construction project is believed to have occurred in 1978, when the hospital added a wing.
The expansion is being paid for with $10 million borrowed through issuing municipal bonds and with revenue from hospital operations.