Site work is set to begin this month to make way for construction of Mount Desert Island Hospital’s new Women’s Health Center.
The new 3,700 square foot facility will be constructed on the footprint of the unfinished structure adjacent to the Cadillac Mountain Medical Building at 322 Main Street in Bar Harbor. Cadillac Family Practice and MDI Hospital Behavioral Health Center will remain at their present location.
“We are extremely pleased to enhance MDI Hospital’s commitment to the community with this new Women’s Health Center,” said MDI Hospital President and CEO Art Blank. “This is the first step in ensuring our facilities meet the current and future health care needs of our community in the most efficient way possible.”
MDI Hospital acquired the Cadillac building in January and included it in their ongoing master facilities planning process. As a result of that process, it was determined the most beneficial course of action was to remove the partially completed structure and rebuild a facility that is purpose-built for the Women’s Health Center. The three-story unfinished shell, which is estimated to be approximately 20 percent complete, will be removed by the end of December. The windows and foundation will be reused in the new facility.
The new Women’s Health Center is designed to blend in with the residential character of the surrounding neighborhood by looking more like a home and less like a commercial building.
The original and current location of the Women’s Health Center, in a former home on Wayman Lane, has served the community for nearly 20 years. The center opened in 1993 culminating the efforts of women in the community who identified the need for a free-standing, women’s health-specific facility. Today, patient demands exceed what can be accommodated by the staff in that building.
To meet current and future needs of women in the community, improve patient privacy and comfort, and enhance operating efficiency, the Women’s Health Center was chosen to be in the first phase of the Cadillac property redevelopment.
Planners are paying close attention to the details of the Wayman Lane location that make the facility welcoming and comforting to ensure those attributes continue in the new building. “Although our new Women’s Health Center is being built specifically as a medical practice, it will have that inviting and homey feel that our current facility has,” said Women’s Health Center Nurse Midwife Linda Robinson.
A fundraising campaign is currently underway and construction of the new facility is expected to begin in summer 2012.
The above sketch is an artist’s rendering and should not be considered a formal architectural document. Final designs are subject to change.