The Nolan Center was packed Monday night as Wold Architects held a meeting to update the community on plans for the new hospital. Members of the city government, SEARHC, the Wrangell Medical Center, and many residents came to hear the update. According to WMC CEO Robert Rang, there were about 60 people in attendance.
Josh Ripplinger, with Wold Architects, gave the update. Ripplinger started the meeting by reviewing a timeline of how the hospital would eventually be constructed. He said that they were currently in the “schematic design phase,” where they are working to figure out what the community wants in their new
hospital, and what would be feasible. The “design development phase” will be next, from October to December, where the designs are finalized. Contracts will be signed between January and March of 2019, and bidding will take place in April 2019. Actual construction of the new hospital, he said, will take place from May 2019 to December 2020. The first patients will be admitted into the new hospital in January of 2021.
“As you can see we’re early on, still, in the process … as you can imagine it takes quite a bit of effort and time to gather that much information and try to build a new hospital in Wrangell,” Ripplinger said.
Ripplinger also showed some slides that gave a layout of the proposed hospital. The campus of the new hospital would be approximately 45,000 square feet, and would be attached to the SEARHC AICS clinic. The new hospital would be accessible via Wood Street and Etolin Street, with patient parking in the front and staff parking in the back. The clinic entrance would serve as the main entrance, Ripplinger said, and an emergency entrance would be constructed nearby on the same side of the campus.
“You see that corridor that runs along here to the nurse’s station?” he asked the audience, pointing to a long hallway connecting the hospital and clinic. “That’s the ‘main street corridor’ that, as you can see, really connects all the clinical services in with the hospital services.”
Besides treatment facilities to care for patients, there were several non-medical aspects of the new hospital that Ripplinger pointed out. These included a prayer/meditation room
and a courtyard for patients and staff to enjoy. He also mentioned how they are planning to match the aesthetic of the AICS clinic, and not create a jarring difference in appearance between the two facilities.
“We want to make sure that we capture the image of the existing clinic and just extend it with the hospital addition,” he said.
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