ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701230019
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: LESLIE HAGER-SMITH STAFF WRITER
Twelve years of labor neared fruition Wednesday when ceremonial shovels and real-life bulldozers broke ground for a new Carilion Radford Community Hospital on former pasture land in Montgomery County.
The crowd of more than 150 hardy souls who braved chill winds to attend the ceremony included local officials, hospital volunteers and employees, the architects' families, business people and local clergy. The hospital is scheduled for completion by the fall of 1998.
Executive Vice President Lester Lamb said a new hospital had been a dream for 12 years, when it became clear the old building would not be able to keep pace with the needs of the community or with the expectations of the professionals who worked there.
In 1988, Radford affiliated with the Roanoke-based Carilion Health System, which concurred with its plans for growth. But changes in the national health care industry began to influence the planning and the new facility was delayed.
Word of the project - and a precedent-setting, tax-sharing pact between Montgomery County and Radford to avoid an annexation fight - surfaced publicly seven years ago.
Since 1992, Radford has devoted itself to "patient-focused care," which places an increased emphasis on streamlining care and doing so with fewer, more versatile employees in a more compact, efficient building. The hospital reduced its staff and re-evaluated its building plans.
As part of that review, hospital officials changed the site of the new building from within a mile of the Radford city line to the southeast side of the Interstate 81-Virginia 177 interchange.
In July 1995, administrators filed a certificate of public need request with the state - the document to justify the new building. That's when Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the for-profit chain that operates the Montgomery Regional and Pulaski Community hospitals, surprised the nonprofit Carilion Health System with a competing request to build a hospital nearby.
The Columbia request was turned down at each step of the bureaucratic process, but it did delay Radford's plans by another 15 months. The state health commissioner granted final approval to Radford Community to build the $30 million facility in September.
"I don't think of this as consolidating our share of the market," said Carilion Health System President Tom Robertson. "Radford Community Hospital has been here over 50 years and they always have been the area's leader in providing high quality, compassionate health care."
The architects were asked to produce a design for the 97-bed, 238,372-square-foot facility with "a minimum of institutional perception and a maximum of the human element," according to Dr. Timothy Chavis, the hospital's chief of staff. Their results were declared by many on Wednesday to be "state of the art."
In retrospect, Lamb is "pleased that we didn't go ahead and build it earlier. If we'd have built it in 1990, it would have been the wrong hospital."
The Rev. Gina Rhea of First Christian Church, one of the onlookers Wednesday, underscored the hospital's importance to the wider community. Her work as a volunteer chaplain associate allows her to see the way it touches people in ways beyond the strictly medical. "I'm glad to see so many people here to support the effort today."
Margaret Leonard, of Blacksburg, was on hand Wednesday as she was in 1943 at the dedication of the original structure in the center of Radford's Plan A district. "I got stuck in the elevator with my cousin during the service. My mother was mortified!" Leonard recalled. Other details of the original event have faded in the years since, but, said Leonard, "I feel I've made the full circle, being here today."
Two buses brought participants to the 110-acre site - purchased for $1.06 million in November from three landowners - in Montgomery County. Off Meadow Creek Road and up Barn Road, they traveled past frozen ponds prickly with cattails to a white tent, pale against overcast skies. Orange construction ribbons whipped by the breeze heralded the visitors.
Betty Hall, president of the hospital's auxiliary, was one of 10 dignitaries who wielded golden shovels to pry at the predug frozen earth for the official groundbreaking. "May God bless this new hospital and all who serve with him," she shivered. "Now let's get this earth moving!"
The ceremony ended with just that, as three bulldozers and two huge pan-graders emerged above the crest of the far hill - site of the future hospital's lobby - and rumbled down the slope, moving a swath of earth toward the assembly.
"It's an exciting day," opined Mike Gates, one of the behind-the-scenes planners. Gates, with the construction management firm of W.R. Adams Inc., has worked on the hospital project for two years and came up with the idea of bringing the 'dozers over the ridge to punctuate the ceremony. "All we wanted to do was make sort of a stripe."
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff. 1. Groundbreaking dignitaries watchby CNBearth-moving equipment start grading for the new Carilion Radford
Community Hospital in a Montgomery County pasture. 2. Artist's
conception shows how the hospital will look when completed. color.
Graphic: Map. color.