Hospital Construction Hits Halfway Mark
Community leaders, hospital staff and residents were given an inside look last week at progress on the new Olney Hamilton Hospital, as project managers led a series of guided tours through the construction site at West Hamilton Street and Avenue M.
Hospital staff toured the 41,000-square-foot facility in two groups earlier in the week, followed by a larger community tour that included Olney City Council members, Young County commissioners, hospital board members, Olney police officers, and civic leaders from both Olney and Newcastle. The tours offered a rare opportunity to walk through the structure as walls, systems and layouts are taking shape.
Construction on the new hospital began in April. Project manager Dave Lilley said crews have faced an unusually high number of weather-related delays this year, slowing progress and pushing out the completion date to October. Despite those setbacks, Mr. Lilley said the hospital is now about half completed. The new facility will be roughly one-third smaller than the current hospital, but Mr. Lilley said modern design standards allow the space to be used far more efficiently.
The building will include modern procedure suites for services currently performed in patient rooms, private intake offices, a community meeting room, a gift shop, a unified blood-draw and laboratory area, and a mix of private and semi-private patient rooms.
The design incorporates recommendations from former Olney Police Chief Dan Birbeck, who previously delivered active-shooter training to city, school district and hospital staff and spoke statewide as an expert. The new emergency department will include a secure holding room for individuals experiencing mental health crises, a feature OPD Chief Bryan Barrett said will provide a safe option for officers and medical staff to deal with potentially dangerous situations.
As expected, the new facil- ity will include only one operating room, meaning labor and delivery services will not resume when the hospital opens. Mr. Lilley pointed out that space currently designated for administrative offices could be converted into a second operating room that meets state requirements, allowing maternity services to return if funding becomes available to finish out the area for medical use.
The hospital board is pursuing tax credits to rehabilitate the existing hospital complex, built in the 1920s and expanded in the 1960s, for administrative purposes. Board members said the new building will deliver stateof- the-art care while easing concerns that the aging facility could be shut down for failing to meet federal health and safety standards.
Voters approved $33 million in general obligation bonds for the project in 2023, with the understanding that the debt would be repaid using tax revenue generated by a wind farm and hydrogen plant within the hospital’s taxing district. Rising inflation and supply-chain pressures later pushed construction costs from roughly $450 per square foot to more than $600, prompting the board to scale back the building size and raise local taxes in the planning stages.