Construction steams ahead at Mat-Su hospital

BOB MARTINSON/Frontiersman reporter

Mat-Su Regional Medical Center is rapidly beginning to resemble the drawings drafted by planners just a few years ago, and its construction is running ahead of schedule.

"It is really exciting to be seeing it all come together and so quickly," said Elizabeth Ripley, director of marketing and public relations for Valley Hospital. "I've been involved with this since it was an idea and in planning and now it's really starting to take shape. We're thinking that we might actually get the keys to the place and begin moving in about December or January."

Completion of the new $70-million, 197,690-square-foot facility had been expected to occur toward the middle of next year. It is Valley Hospital's first construction venture with its partner, Triad Hospitals Inc.

Groundbreaking for the project, located near the Parks Highway's intersection with Trunk Road, took place May 17 last year.

Jay Hyde, senior project manager, said virtually all of the metal work on the skeleton has been finished. The inside is changing quickly and beginning to look like more than just a large room.

"There are actually beginning to be hallways to walk down and you can see where the rooms are going to be, but the outside will look pretty much like this for a while, until we begin the final stone work and signs and landscaping and things on the outer shell" said Jacob Seyb, assistant project manager.

Presently, there are boards to keep the weather out, where large 16-foot-wide windows will be, and temporary small windows cut to give some lighting for construction.

"There have been some delays in our sewer and water systems, but they are being resolved now, and we have all the power needed and we have a backup generator that can handle the whole building, but it's always nice to have a redundant source of power," said Seyb, referring to a dispute between Matanuska Electric Association and the Mat-Su Borough over where electricity transmission lines supplying this power source will be situated. That matter is now in court.

The first floor of the site of Valley Hospital's new facility has the emergency entrance, with heated parking for ambulances and large garage doors on each end for quick entry and exit. This is also where the intensive care units and magnetic resonance imaging machine will be.

Seyb led a tour through the building Wednesday showing the newly laid-out ICU rooms with all the electrical outlets, but skeletal metal framework for many of the walls.

Another area has a large sunken cutout in the concrete where all of the massive electrical circuits will lie beneath the MRI machine.

The MRI, Ripley said, "is much more powerful than the one we were originally going to have.

"We were going to move our existing machine in from Valley Hospital, which has a 1.0-strength Tesla magnet, but now we're going to have a new machine with a 1.5-strength Tesla magnet," she said. "The results will be transmitted from the machine to the ER and the physician for the diagnostics, saving precious minutes. The difference to the consumers is that it will be incredibly faster, so the patient will spend 10 instead of 30 minutes in the machine, and it will get to the physician sooner for diagnosis."

Ripley said the new machine is much more open than previous models, for people who are claustrophobic.

"And this new magnet will have more bells and whistles for doing things like brain and spinal scans." she said. "We will have a neurologist on staff and more services will be available locally."

Population increases created the need for bed space and operating rooms, meaning that the doctors are more interested in coming here, Ripley said.

Drywall is being put up on interior areas of the building, but the rooms toward the outer shell of the building are still getting some water leaking in through yet unfinished areas, where snow finds its way in and melts.

New concrete has just been poured for the second floor and on the roof. The first floor is still only half poured and has dirt floors where the cafeteria and offices will be constructed.

The cafeteria, on the south side, will have views of Pioneer Peak and Twin Peaks. Four main stairwells, now in place, are being used by construction workers until the elevators are ready.

"We are getting a lot done quickly, and we're doing it with about 85-percent local hire, and mostly union workers," Ripley said. "We are really doing things efficiently with our resources.

"We're also fortunate to have gotten this shell approved and built to this size, so we will have room to expand to fit the needs of the future. We had to show that there would be the need for expansion and luckily, the approval and funding came through," she said as she walked around on the third floor, looking at the massive floor space.

The third-floor shell has been built strictly for expansion to fit future needs and, when completed, will provide a future total of 130 rooms. For now, the hospital is expected to contain 74 beds.

The second floor will house patient recovery rooms and each 16-foot window will shed light on two rooms.