Dirt is starting to move on the MultiCare Urgent Care site in Covington as the free standing 24-hour emergency department construction gets started.
The healthcare facility plans for the emergency department and later for a 58-bed hospital on the site.
Covington Community Development Director Richard Hart said the city has given MultiCare permission for work to proceed.
“They are ready to go,” Hart said. “They are cleared from a city stand point.”
Hart said the city will continue to follow up with inspections as the construction proceeds.
Marce Edwards, MultiCare media relations manager, wrote in an email, “Right now they are doing site preparation, digging for the foundation and utilities.”
Edwards said the emergency department building will begin to be visible in early July.
The plan is to open the facility in the spring of 2012.
Valley Medical Center is also planning to construct an emergency department on a 10-acre site in Covington’s town center behind Safeway and Fred Meyer.
City officials estimate Valley is about three to four months behind MultiCare’s construction timeline.
Valley is not planning to build a hospital on the site.
MultiCare’s plan is to complete the emergency department in 2012 as part of phase one. Next would be construction of the 58-bed hospital with a planned opening in 2014 or 2015.
Among the planned offerings at the hospital would be pediatric services.
The Department of Health approved MultiCare’s certificate of need request for the hospital in December of 2010.
A certificate of need approval from the department is necessary to build a hospital, but, not an emergency department.
At the same time MultiCare’s certificate of need request was submitted, Valley requested 60 beds and Auburn Regional Medical Center 70. Both were denied.
