Beaming with pride…

Beaming with pride…

County, hospital officials ‘ sign off ’ on beam for new Baptist- Crittenden facility

news@theeveningtimes.com

Work is continuing and progressing on schedule at the new Baptist hospital in Crittenden County.

To mark the progress, Flintco delivered a three-ton steel beam courtesy of Nucor Steel to the county courthouse for officials to sign before it gets riveted into place.

“I didn’t expect it would be this big,” County Judge Woody Wheeless said of the three and a half ton nearly sixty foot long beam. “But I’m glad to see things are going really well. I’m so proud for the citizens of this county.”

Baptist Memorial Hospital-Crittenden County CEO Brian Welton said the work is moving along nicely and is an impressive site to see now that the steel skeleton is going up.

“Before, you could kind of see the shape of it on the site,” Welton said. “But now that the steel is going up, you can really see it looking like a hospital.”

The county and Baptist Memorial Healthcare broke ground on the site at Seventh Street and I-40 in April. The original plan called for a $25 million, 50,000 square foot building, but Baptist decided to add more services and expanded the facility to 62,000 square feet.

The additional space will accommodate larger and more operating rooms, an endoscopy suite, and an enlarged cancer infusion center that were not in the original budget.

Construction is being supported by a one cent sales tax which will generate $32 million. Baptist is picking up the additional cost of the $44 million project.

The county has been without a hospital since 2014 when the former Crittenden Regional Hospital declared bankruptcy and closed.

Baptist is the largest health care provider in the Mid-South with 17 hospitals in the region and over 200 beds.

Officials predict that about 25,000 patients a year will use the ER.

Welton said getting all of the dirt work done at the site was the biggest challenge.

Contractors hauled off 138 million pounds of “gumbo” soil and brought in 168 million pounds in order to build up the land to support the weight of the building.

“The big bogie was the dirt work,” Welton said. “Flintco has done a great job on the construction. Things are moving along well.”

The hospital is expected to be completed around November 2018 and open to receive its first patients in early 2019.

By Mark Randall