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Rain Doesn’t Halt Kickoff of $100M Tower at St. E’s
BOARDMAN, Ohio -- Because God used his aspergillum so freely Wednesday, the groundbreaking scheduled for the seven-story patient tower at the St. Elizabeth Health Center here had to be moved inside. There, in a packed Azalea Room, the Rev. John Trimbur used his aspergillum to sprinkle holy water on the architects’ renderings of the $100 million structure and bless the enterprise.
Yesterday’s ceremony, as the president of the St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center, Genie Aubel, allowed, was the first time a groundbreaking was held inside.
Afterward, Trimbur, accompanied by Deacon Paul Lasko, went outside to sprinkle holy water on and bless the brick walls of the surgical unit above which the 165,000-square-foot tower will rise. Both are chaplains at St. E’s Boardman campus.
The tower will provide much needed health care to residents of the Valley and employment to the skilled tradesmen who will work on the tower through the end of 2016.
Of the $100 million-plus figure, Humility of Mary Health Partners has committed $94.7 million, Akron Children’s Hospital Mahoning Valley Enterprises $7 million.
When complete, the St. Elizabeth Boardman campus will expand to 10 operating rooms from six to accommodate additional admissions, Aubel said. It will also allow HMHP, which oversees the Catholic hospitals in the Valley, to move its maternity services to Boardman from its Youngstown campus on Belmont Avenue.
That will allow the Youngstown campus to complete its efforts to provide every patient admitted there with his own private room.
As the chairman of the board of directors at HMHP, Daryl S. Cameron observed, the tower will allow the Boardman campus to double the number of beds in the hospital. Patients will be treated as guests, he promised, and the tower will be a site where people will have “the happiest and saddest times of their lives.”
The tower will offer 72 medical surgical/telemetry beds, six intensive-care beds, four operating rooms, 12 labor and delivery beds, 32 post-partum beds and a nursery with 24 beds for newborns.
Of the $94.7 million HMHP will spend on the tower – all of which has been raised, Aubel said – $52.1 million will be spent on construction, another $14 million on medical equipment to treat patients, $12.8 million on site work/substation/parking, $5.4 million in the neonatal intensive care unit, $3.3 million in information technology, voice and data systems and $3.3 million on design. Contingency is budgeted at $3.8 million.
Construction, to be overseen by general contractors KBJ Inc., Cleveland, and Shook Construction Co., Dayton, will soon begin. As much as 95% of the work will be subcontracted to companies in the Valley, said Wayne Tennant, HMHP vice president for support services. Among them are plumbing, electrical, painting, boiler, bricklayer, elevator and iron working contractors who employ members of the building trades unions.
“Some packages have gone out for bid already,” Tennant said.
Phase I construction, which includes the shifting of the obstetrics unit and special care nursery services plus additional operating rooms, should be completed in March or April of 2014, HMHP says.
Phase II construction won’t be complete until late 2014 and floors four through seven, to be established as mix of medical surgery and telemetry, will be completed in phases. The fifth floor is scheduled to open in January 2015, the sixth in January 2016 and the seventh in January 2017.
Strollo Architects, Youngstown, and Moody Nolan, Columbus, are the architects who designed the tower, with Rodney Lamberson of Strollo overseeing that firm’s efforts.
A partner with HMHP in the tower is Akron Children’s Hospital Mahoning Valley Enterprises. Sharon Hrina, vice president of Akron Children’s remarked that the $7 million her health care system has committed is in addition to the $50 million it spent to acquire the Beeghly campus some three miles north on Market Street.
Hrina joined HMHP CEO Robert Shroder in his remarks about their systems’ commitment to serve all who come for help, regardless of their ability to pay. It’s getting tougher, Shroder said, with Congress reducing funding for Medicare and Medicaid. Charity care and bad debt at the St. Elizabeth campuses in Mahoning County and at St. Joseph Hospital in Warren is $16 million higher than last year, he said.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.