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Broadlawns Medical Center CEO Jody Jenner just has to look out his office window to see a long-awaited vision begin to take shape. Construction workers will spend the next few weeks relocating the hospital’s helicopter pad in preparation for construction of a new, larger emergency department. The work marks the initial phase of a $44 million renovation for the publicly funded community hospital.

In addition to the new emergency department, the $15.5 million first phase also encompasses a redesigned main entrance, patient access and waiting areas for the hospital, along with upgrades to its radiology areas, including a fixed magnetic resonance imaging machine and a nuclear medicine area. The emergency department will be about three times larger than the current space, and feature new sections to accommodate walk-in and urgent-care patients, and a separate area for mental-health patient intake.

More than 100 construction companies recently bid for subcontract work on the project. Fifteen contractors were selected by the Broadlawns board of trustees with input from Graham Construction Co., the project manager. Shive-Hattery Inc. is the architect for the project, which is the first major renovation of the hospital in nearly 20 years.

Plans to build a new medical office building on the campus and renovate the surgery department have been postponed until next spring. “We’ve broken the original phase one into two parts for financing reasons, to take a little more conservative approach,” Jenner said.

The emergency department and radiology renovations should be completed by the middle of next year, with the remainder of the first phase to be finished by mid-2011, he said.

The project will be funded with a combination of $30 million in revenue bonds, approximately $1 million in federal funds and proceeds from a private fund-raising campaign. Iowa Health – Des Moines has pledged $1 million, and plans to provide up to $1.4 million more in matching funds.

“Much of this project is occurring because we’ve had operational success,” Jenner said. Broadlawns has ended the past three years in the black, he noted. “We’re growing our services lines and are really being more accountable to the taxpayers and patients we serve,” he said.

A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for June 18 beginning at 5 p.m.