The foundation for the hospital’s new surgical services wing is 50 percent complete, and structural steel will arrive in the next few weeks. A new stormwater retention pond has been built along state Route 86.

The project is on budget but a couple weeks behind schedule, Adirondack Health CEO Sylvia Getman said during a hard-hat tour of the site Friday.

“I can’t imagine there are many projects in the North Country that aren’t a little behind with the rain and other things going on,” Getman said. “It feels like a slower start because you’re doing all the enabling things, the underground things. It’s always more exhilarating once you see the concrete go down and the steel go up, and you see what the future will look like; then I think it’s a little easier to get excited about it.”

The new surgical services department will replace the hospital’s four operating rooms, which were built in the 1960s, with six new operating suites.

A new stormwater retention pond has been constructed along state Route 86 in Saranac Lake, next to Adirondack Medical Center, to collect runoff from hospital and its parking areas. (Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

“One of those will have mobile imaging equipment right inside the room,” said hospital Communications Director Matt Scollin. “Rather than being in the middle of a surgery, having to take a look at something and bringing patients back out for a CT scan or X-ray, they can do it right inside the hybrid suite.”

Getman said this kind of technology will help recruit and retain new physicians.

“It’s the kind of technology that physicians are training on in their residency programs. We have a couple physicians joining our team at the end of the summer, and we want to make sure they’re using the very best equipment.”

The new surgical wing will also have a new MRI that will be 75 percent quieter than the current model, and an area that hospital officials called a “sterile core.”

“For any tool or instrument the OR uses that has to be sterilized, they’ll now have an elevator that takes them from the operating room to the sterile core of the building where they can be processed and sent right back up so they never leave the OR area,” Scollin said.

The project involves construction of a two-story addition as well as renovation of existing space at the back of the hospital. The latter hasn’t taken place yet, so there’s been no major disruption to services or inconvenience to patients, Getman said.

“Bear With Us” signs are posted in various locations around the facility, asking the public for its patience amid the renovations. Hospital officials have regular meetings about the construction timeline and ways to mitigate any impacts to staff and visitors, Scollin said. They have also initiated a kind of “time out” policy for work on the site.

“If a woman goes into active labor and she doesn’t want to hear any drumming or thunking out there, she can tell the nurse, and we can make the change necessary to stop the work,” Scollin said. “We’ve done that.”

The project is about 15 percent complete, according to construction manager Jim Marlow. The projected completion date is the winter of 2018.

This is the biggest building project at the hospital since the construction of the Redfield Medical Office Building, which started in 1999 and was completed in 2001.

It’s one of two major building projects Adirondack Health is planning that will cost a combined $36 million. The other is a new, 42,000-square-foot medical fitness center that would be constructed on the Uihlein nursing home campus in Lake Placid. It would house all the services currently provided at the other Adirondack Medical Center hospital on Church Street, Lake Placid.

A groundbreaking for the Lake Placid facility was held in June. Getman said actual construction activity will begin soon.

“Probably in the next two weeks you’ll see fencing go up and some of the (construction) trailers arrive,” she said. “Because it’s a complete new building, it goes up relatively quickly once you start. We actually think the two projects will probably end about the same time.”

The Adirondack Health Foundation is nearing its $12 million fundraising goal for the projects, according to Executive Director Hannah Hanford.

“We have about $1.5 million to go to reach our goal,” she said. “We hope, with a strong finish this summer, we’ll be there. We’re just so enormously grateful to our community for their generous support.”