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‘Long overdue’ – new Mackinac Straits Hospital is taking shape

Date Posted: August 28 2009

ST. IGNACE – A much-needed, modern health care facility is on the way to this city, in the form of the new $37.2 million Mackinac Straits Hospital.

Skanska USA Building is managing construction of the project, which is currently employing about 80 Hardhats on site.

The two-story hospital is being erected on the north side of the city along the I-75 Business Loop on the north side of town near the Mackinac County Airport, on land donated by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. The facility, a total of 82,000 square feet with a total of 15 patient beds, will devote 20,000 square feet of medical-clinical space for the use of tribal members.

“It’s going very well,” said Skanska Senior Project Engineer Jayme Couchene. “We’re on schedule, we’re within budget. The tradespeople have been great; they have worked together really well. A lot of these guys know each other, so there’s lots of teamwork.”

Building such a major project in the lightly populated St. Ignace area – the city’s population is only 2,678 –brought about a worker-friendly construction schedule change by Skanska and its subcontractors. Couchene said the building is on a four-tens schedule, which allows tradespeople – many of who come from long distances to work – the opportunity to have a three-day weekend to be with their family.

Congressman Bart Stupak led the effort to secure federal funds for the new hospital. “This funding will allow for this hospital to be re-built from the bottom up,” Stupak said when federal money was released. “Updates to the Mackinac Straits hospital are long overdue.” Constructed in 1954, the existing hospital serving St. Ignace is in a residential area and could not be cost-effectively renovated or expanded to meet the needs of modern health care providers and expectations of patients.

The new facility will offer expanded outpatient dialysis, oncology/infusion, rehabilitative and radiological services and a mobile MRI. Stupak said the current hospital is badly in need of upgrades, with acute care patients forced to stay in rooms with no air conditioning or air exchange and to use community bathrooms and showers.

“The staff at Mackinac Straits hospital do a tremendous job, but the fact is that the old building impedes their ability to care for their patients,” Stupak said. “The old Mackinac Straits hospital is not even handicapped accessible and the dated infrastructure is falling apart.”

Couchene said the biggest problem so far has been the site itself – more specifically, the tremendous underground boulders that needed tobe reduced to rubble. “They were big old boulders,” Couchene said, broken up by a blasting crew that had to be imported from Indiana.

The new hospital is expected to be complete April 1, 2010.


THE $37.2 MILLION Mackinac Straits Hospital under construction in St. Ignace.


INSTALLING A PIPE hanger in a hallway at Mackinac Straits Hospital is Todd Hoops of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 111, working for Dressler Mechanical.