Sacred Heart to get wings

Sacred Heart Medical Center released architects' drawings this week of its $131 million expansion project, the largest the hospital has undertaken since the main tower was built in 1971.

One of the region's most expensive building projects in years, the project will add two floors to the east wing and a new seven-story west wing addition.

It will bring Sacred Heart up to its 623-bed licensed capacity. The hospital now has 540 beds.

The project includes 314,000 square feet of new and remodeled floor space.

Construction on both wings will begin next spring. The east wing is scheduled for completion in spring 2003, the west wing in summer 2004.

The two new floors on the east side will be called the Sacred Heart Children's Hospital and will include play areas, an indoor garden and family sleep rooms.

The west addition will expand the hospital's surgical center, adding nine operating rooms for a total of 28.

The west addition also will consolidate many of the hospital's women's services, including a new breast cancer clinic.

The Birth Place and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, currently on the hospital's ninth floor, will move to the west addition. The NICU will have 47 beds, 31 more than the current unit.

Expansion is needed to meet current demand, as well as projected demand due to population growth and the medical needs of aging baby boomers, said chief operating office Mike Wilson.

Due to lack of space, the hospital turned away patients on 45 of the first 150 days of this year, Wilson said.

The finance committee of Providence Services Eastern Washington, the hospital's umbrella organization, has not yet decided whether to borrow money to pay for the project or pay for it out of the hospital's cash flow, Wilson said.

Mahlum Architects of Seattle designed the project. The contractor is Bouten Construction of Spokane.

In a related project, construction for the Madison Inn, a hotel facility east of Grand Boulevard for patients and families, will begin this fall.

Sacred Heart's project is part of a boom in health-care construction in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene.

Other medical institutions with construction under way or planned include Deaconess Medical Center, Valley Hospital and Medical Center, Holy Family Hospital, Kootenai Medical Center, the Spokane Falls Family Clinic, Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories, and the Inland Northwest Blood Center.

None compares to the Sacred Heart project in projected cost. For example, the $18 million Deaconess project is adding four stories and 128,000 square feet of offices and clinics to the hospital's health and education center, west of the main building.

That project is expected to be ready for occupancy in 2002.

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