Construction progress has been mostly on schedule for the Greene County Medical Center’s expansion project.

Since the groundbreaking event on April 3rd, Chief Executive Officer Carl Behne says the public health wing of the hospital has been torn down.  He states that several truck loads of dirt have been moved around to level out the area for the 51,000 square-foot expansion to be built on the east side of the current facility.

Behne comments that there were six pockets where the ground wasn’t safe to build on and so there have been times when people may have driven by and saw huge piles of dirt one day and then, seeing it all leveled out the next.

“So what that was was that they removed that dirt, re-tested the soil, all six areas passed with flying colors after that.  And so they brought in some additional soil that had already been pre-tested from another site and placed that down and then had it regraded.”

He adds that in the next few weeks a six-to-eight-foot high retaining wall will be built along Grimmell Road and Lincoln Way with an expected several more truck loads of dirt to level all of that out.

The 51,000 square-foot expansion will house a new emergency room department, along with a new radiology, respiratory and laboratory departments and a pharmacy station.

Behne hopes to have the new addition completed by next summer.