KALAMAZOO - Bronson Methodist Hospital and the building trades are moving dirt, performing demolition and getting started on a $50 million campus expansion program that will accommodate a 34 percent increase in inpatient growth in recent years at the hospital.

"We're just getting started," said Mall City Mechanical Project Manager Mike Conway. "We have about 32 people out here from Mall City alone, and it looks like it's going to be a real nice job."

According to information provided by the hospital, the first phase of the expansion project will be the $38.1 million North Pavilion development. The six-floor Center Building on Bronson's North Campus between Walnut and Lovell streets is being redeveloped into a patient care pavilion.

Moving into the fourth, fifth and a portion of the third floor of the new "North Pavilion" will be the Bronson BirthPlace and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The birthplace area will expand from 31 to 40 rooms, allowing it to accommodate 4,000 obstetric patients per year as compared to 3,600 in 2004.

The NICU, which treated 678 infants last year, will convert from a 45-bed nursery design, with 85 square feet per infant, to all-private rooms of 140 square feet per infant. This will create more privacy and space for each patient and family.

The area currently occupied by the Bronson BirthPlace and NICU in the West Pavilion will subsequently be developed into 40 additional private rooms for adult patients. The new North Pavilion will have medical offices. Support services, such as laboratory and diagnostics, will also be incorporated, along with a café and other amenities.

The project involves about 243,000 square feet, and is expected to wrap up in March 2007. Bronson expects to add about 70 employees in a variety of patient care and support positions as a result of the North Pavilion development.

A separate $8.8 million South Campus development will create 40 new adult inpatient rooms on the third floor of the West Pavilion and is the second phase of campus expansion. It will take about one year to construct. Construction will begin soon after the Bronson BirthPlace and NICU move to the North Pavilion in 2007 and should be completed by March 2008. At least 80 new jobs are predicted for this phase of development.

"This plan to develop a new patient care pavilion on the North Campus and add more adult inpatient rooms on the South Campus will allow us to continue to grow to keep pace with their needs," said Bronson President & CEO Frank Sardone. "It also reflects our continued commitment to downtown Kalamazoo and to reinvesting in services that need to be sustained and accessible to the community."

Mall City Mechanical Supt. Chris Schipper said the area the building trades are currently renovating was erected in the late 1960s and then in the late 1970s. "It gets a little tricky around here, because the hospital is still treating patients nearby," he said. "But it's going well, the people here are doing a really good job."

A new two-story 4,500-kilowatt electrical substation is being built on hospital grounds to feed the new development. In part to address needs of modern equipment at the hospital, the voltage will be changed at Bronson from a 4,800-volt system to an 8,320-volt system.

"We're just gearing up and getting our hands dirty out here," said Moore Electric General Foreman Bill Cook. "But we're going to move quickly; they want this substation done by July."

The project will bring Bronson's total investment in the development of its downtown facilities to $250 million since 1995.

ASSEMBLING A FIELD of support brackets for conduit of various sizes that will feed a new substation at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo are Chad Luptowski and Joe Stanislawski of IBEW Local 131 and Moore Electric.

WELDING A SCHEDULE 40 carbon steel hydronic heating line at Bronson Hospital is Brody Kent of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 357 and Mall City Mechanical.