by Rick Griffin
The Grossmont Healthcare District (GHD), a taxpayer-supported public agency that owns the property and buildings as landlord of Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, reports steady progress on bond-financed infrastructure improvements at Sharp Grossmont Hospital.
GHD officials are hoping state regulators will approve in February plans for a $60.3 million Heart & Vascular Center, which will precede submission of construction bids in March or April. This 83,330-square-foot Center will include space for a new pharmacy and clinical lab and cath labs, as well as flexible, multi-purpose procedure rooms that can be used for a wide range of specialties, including general surgery, minimally invasive surgery and image-guided surgery, as well as endovascular intervention procedures.
Another improvement project, an 18,000-square-foot, $51 million Central Energy Plant, is scheduled to draw bids in December, with construction to start in the spring. The facility will feature new, energy efficient technologies and equipment, including a new chiller and a steam boiler that will provide heating and cooling to various sections of the hospital.
Meanwhile, work is continuing on underground utilities on a two-lane road located in the back of the hospital that connects the Women’s Center to Murray Drive. Until the underground utility work is completed sometime in mid-2012, portions of the road near the Women’s Center will be closed to the general public with access available only to emergency and construction vehicles at various times. The utilities work includes relocating gas and water lines, steam lines, medical gasses, electrical power and telecommunication lines. Plans call for more than 7,500 feet of utilities to be installed underground along a 700-foot portion of the road.
In 2006, voters approved Proposition G, a $247 million bond measure that is expected to finance through 2016 a number of infrastructure improvements at the regional medical facility that opened in 1952.
