Several community, business and hospital leaders participated in the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday.
CULLMAN – On Wednesday afternoon, Cullman Regional Medical Center (CRMC), TRO Healthcare Design architects and Doster Construction broke ground for a hospital expansion that won’t actually involve any broken ground. Having found that the original hospital plans could accommodate future vertical expansion, a fifth floor will be added to the main hospital building. This expansion, which was announced last January, will add 30 new beds to CRMC, and should increase the number of private rooms while decreasing wait time for rooms. It will also add 30 new jobs at the hospital initially, and many more when the expansion is fully complete.
CRMC CEO James Clements began the ceremony, saying, “The project that we’re here to talk about today will allow Cullman Regional to better serve the growing healthcare needs of our community. Once fully operational, this project will employ an additional 100 people in our community.”
CRMC Board Building and Grounds Committee Chairman Dennis Richard introduced architects from TRO Healthcare Design, who drew up the plans for the expansion, and the team from Doster Construction that will oversee construction activities.
Richard said, “We’re all very excited to be here to kick off this much-anticipated project. The growth of the hospital over the last two years certainly shows the confidence our community has in the services we provide, and we’re excited to expand those services to meet the needs.”
TRO Healthcare Design, who won the contract by bid, created the original plans for CRMC and for each subsequent expansion of the facility.
The Alabama Certificate of Need Review Board, an agency that studies needs for healthcare construction, approved the expansion. Chairman and Cullman native Neal Morrison said that when he was approached about the project, “I said, ‘I’m for it. Whatever they want to do, I’m for it. It’s Cullman, it’s home, I’m for it. Why would you be opposed to something that’s going to better your community that you grew up in?'”
Morrison and others noted that in our aging population, healthcare is a major issue when people decide where they want to live.”One of the strongest driving forces behind economic development is the quality of healthcare that you have in that area. So this alone right here will help them (Cullman Economic Development) do their job better recruiting people,” he said.
Later, Cullman Mayor Woody Jacobs spoke to the Tribune to back up Morrison’s statements: “It’s a very vital part of the recruitment process. You’ve got to have a good hospital, got to have good schools. We’re lucky to have good elementary, middle and high schools, Wallace State, the hospital’s vital, parks and rec. All those pieces come into play with recruitment, and if you don’t believe it, just wait til they come in.”
After remarks were made and the development team was introduced, the ceremony moved outside to an area of the back parking lot where Doster Construction has already begun assembling equipment.
There the sizable group of those involved in the process put on their hard hats and grabbed shovels for the official groundbreaking.
After the dirt had been thrown, the Tribune caught up with Marty Stover, the senior superintendent for Doster Construction who will be the project’s onsite construction manager. He says construction will begin with the relocation of CRMC’s antennas and removal of exterior bricks from the elevator mechanism housing on the roof. He shared a little of the timetable, indicating that the project is going to get underway very quickly.
Pointing to lift equipment already onsite, Stover said, “Obviously we’ve already started. That should start going up next week, and probably in the next two weeks we’ll have a crane come in here to start removing those bricks and take down those antennas.”
The project is expected to be completed by the fall of 2018.
Lindsey Dossey, CRMC’s director of marketing, said, “We are really excited to be expanding the hospital to meet the needs of our community, and adding 100 additional jobs as our CEO mentioned. We’re excited to be growing. A lot of hospitals in the state of Alabama are closing, and we’re expanding; which I think says a lot about our community and a lot about the confidence the community has in the services we provide.”
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