A $63 million expansion of Placerville's Marshall Medical Center has cleared a final hurdle en route to construction.
The City Council this week authorized vacating portions of Marshall Way, and Gold and Rowland streets to make way for an 88,000-square-foot, three-story acute-care wing.
It will house a new emergency room, women's center and birthing rooms, intensive care unit and additional acute-care facilities, as well as a new cafeteria.
Administrator James Whipple said several houses along the vacated streets will be demolished next week, and site work for the expansion will begin this winter. The new wing is expected to open by January 2011.
The expansion is a major undertaking for Marshall, one of a relatively small number of independent community hospitals remaining in the state and the only hospital on the county's west slope.
The new facilities are needed to handle the county's growing population, said Whipple. "Our emergency room has patients in the hall daily," he said.
The number of emergency-room beds will increase from 12 to 32.
The 105-bed hospital, designed in the late 1950s, saw its patient census increase 34 percent between 2000 and 2007, while the number of people treated in the emergency room rose 37 percent during the same period.
The expansion will include a 17-bed birthing center and 12-bed intensive care unit, as well as 34 to 37 beds for acute-care patients.
Because of funding constraints, facilities inside the new wing will be completed in phases, beginning with the emergency room, a new lobby and birthing center. The intensive-care and acute-care facilities will be added as money becomes available.
Whipple said the cost of the entire expansion is expected to total about $100 million.
Designing the project was a challenge given the hospital's location atop a hill.
"It's a difficult site," Whipple said, but the project promises improved traffic circulation and parking.
Michael Ryan of Anova Architects, said measures are included to reduce the impact of hospital traffic on the surrounding neighborhood.
Plans include a secondary access, off Washington Street, so ambulances can avoid heavily traveled Cedar Ravine Road.
The realignment of Marshall Way also will allow for parking lots closer to the hospital, eliminating the need for people to cross the street to reach the lobby.
Call The Bee's Cathy Locke, (916) 608-7451.
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