Business First of Columbus wrote
Children’s adding on to expansion plan
by Carrie Ghose
Monday, November 26, 2007
The new main wing of Nationwide Children’s Hospital will have an extra floor and cost $60 million more than original plans, the hospital announced Monday.
When completed, the expansion will make the south Columbus campus the second-largest pediatric hospital and research center in the United States, the hospital said. Construction is expected to begin next year.
The 12-story, $800 million expansion has 200,000 square feet more than the 2005 design because patient projections are rising faster than expected. Officials had said at community meetings in August that the design would likely be enlarged because Children’s expects to treat 1 million patients a year by 2012, when the expansion is expected to open. That’s up from about 400,000 patients in 1998 and 700,000 in 2005.
The hospital says the expansion will create 2,400 jobs and will have an overall economic impact of $1 billion.
A plan to reconfigure the exit from Interstates 70/71 that routes traffic to Parsons Avenue instead of 18th Street also led to changes in the design from two years ago. The addition will be rotated to face Parsons, tucking it closer to the existing buildings and freeing space on the perimeter of the campus for a 6-acre park-like setting.
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