Maine's Mount Desert Island Hospital is set for a major $42 million expansion and renovation project, including improving emergency room capacity and acquiring a clinic in Southwest Harbor. Despite winter approaching, construction remains active across the state with various notable projects underway, including a luxury townhouse complex in Portland and a maintenance facility in Gardiner.
Shutterstock photo/Panchenko Vladimir
Big changes are coming to Mount Desert Island (MDI) Hospital in Bar Harbor along Maine's Atlantic Coast.
The medical facility, which has become busier as the local tourism industry has grown, received state approval in early December to pursue a $42 million expansion and renovation.
In addition to those plans, the hospital has acquired a clinic in the town of Southwest Harbor that it plans to merge into other similar facilities it already owns elsewhere on MDI, hospital officials announced.
Chrissi Maguire, the hospital's president and CEO, said updates and renovations would be made to several areas within the hospital, including its laboratory, physical therapy, orthopedics and urology spaces.
"It's 129 years young next year, and we really needed to do some renovations," she explained to Portland's WCSH-TV.
Plans call for the hospital to triple the size of its Bar Harbor emergency room facilities and to make the main building more visible from Main Street. A new primary entrance will be built on the structure's western facade while the parcels along Stanwood Place, which separate the facility from Main Street, will be redesigned and landscaped to make the hospital easier to find and more accessible to visitors.
"We're still a little hidden back there," Mariah Cormier, the hospital's spokesperson, said in speaking with the Bangor Daily News about its campus, which lists 10 Wayman Lane as its official address.
Doubling patient capacity at the hospital's emergency room is another key component of the expansion, Maguire said, and should help solve one of the staff's biggest challenges during tourist season on the island. During certain times of the year, the medical center often has lines of people waiting to be seen.
Cormier added that the hospital serves residents from MDI, as well as provides treatment to many visitors from out of state because of the number of tourists who visit the island and Acadia National Park in the summer and fall. Many of those patients, she said, come to the hospital in private vehicles, rather than by ambulance, and so have to find it on their own.
Bar Harbor can be congested in the summer, she said, so making the hospital easier to find and access should translate to better overall patient care.
"Already, navigating downtown Bar Harbor isn't easy," explained Cormier.
Long-Awaited Project
The hospital first announced its plans to make major design changes to its main building in 2021, but was required to get an okay from the Maine Department of Health of Human Services before it could proceed with the project. That approval, in the form of a certificate of need, was granted by the state on Nov. 21.
"Securing the certificate of need approval marks a pivotal moment for Mount Desert Island Hospital," Maguire noted. "This decision enables us to move forward with critical expansion projects that will strengthen our ability to provide high-quality, patient-centered care for our community."
State approval of a certificate of need for the hospital's planned $42 million in upgrades was required only for the anticipated main building expansion, not the other projects, Cormier clarified.
The acquisition of Acadia Family Center, a private clinic on Fernald Point Road in Southwest Harbor, factors into the hospital's physical reorganization plans, Cormier told the Bangor Daily News.
Because MDI Hospital is classified as a critical access facility, it is limited in how many separate health centers it can operate, she said. For that reason, it will move medical services currently offered at Acadia Family Center to clinics it already owns and operates elsewhere in Southwest Harbor and Northeast Harbor, but it will transfer other functions to the Fernald Point Road property.
In addition, the hospital's advancement and human resources departments will move into the newly acquired Southwest Harbor property, which also will be used for community engagement events and programs, Cormier said.
"There will be a lot of administrative functions over there," she added.
Besides the acquisition of Acadia Family Center and the expansion and reorientation of its main building, the hospital has had other projects in the works.
It is currently nearing completion of upgrading its energy systems at the main Bar Harbor building, and recently completed construction of its Kogod Center for Medical Education, which provides housing and classroom space for medical students who come to Bar Harbor to learn about rural medicine.
With Winter Approaching, Maine Seeing No Slowdown in Construction
As Maine contractors "plow" into the winter months, there has been no shortage of significant building projects under way, Mainebiz reported Dec. 16.
For example, in Portland, the New England state's largest city, Hebert Construction has broken ground on a nine-unit complex of luxury townhouses and condominiums at 53 Carleton St. in the community's West End.
Carleton West is a partnership of developer Jack Soley and Ali Malone of Waypoint Brokers Collective, both in Portland, and builder Tim Hebert, whose firm is headquartered in Lewiston with a satellite office in Portland.
A pair of other Portland companies are involved in the effort: Archetype Architects supplied the design, and the upscale project's landscaping will be led by Anthony Muench RLA. In addition, Norway Savings Bank provided the financing for the complex, which has an estimated construction price tag of $14 million, according to Mainebiz.
Other construction efforts of note include:
- The future headquarters of the Roux Institute, for which Consigli Construction, with a Portland office, is doing sitework.
- An overhaul of Portland's long-vacant Dry Dock restaurant, which was acquired by Luke's Lobster. Optimum Construction, based in South Portland, is in charge of that project.
- In Gardiner, DeStefano & Associates Inc., from Portsmouth, N.H., is building a 4,000-sq.-ft. maintenance facility for United Rentals. The architect is Ron Henry Allen AIA, located in Lunenburg, Mass.
- Renovations to the Center for Shopping Plaza in Sanford are also being done by DeStefano & Associates, which involves fitting out a 30,000-sq.-ft. former Ollies Bargain Outlet. Bangor-based TAC Architectural Group Inc. handled the facility's design. The project is slated to be finished in January, Mainebiz reported.
Lately, DeStefano & Associates has been busy with work in both Maine and New Hampshire. In recent weeks, the firm has also completed construction on two more Aroma Joe's locations: at 6 Cascade Rd in Saco, and at 495 Amherst St. in Nashua, N.H. The Saco coffee shop was a new construction, while the Nashua effort was a renovation project. The architect for each one was Kansas City, Mo.-based TK Architects.
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