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LISA GREENEThe hospital has embarked on a $30-million plan to improve its looks, Byzantine design, and services for heart and cancer patients.
ST. PETERSBURG - Technically, the basement room at St. Anthony's Hospital is its auditorium.
Never mind that visitors sat Tuesday in stackable chairs, under a low ceiling, surrounded by pillars decorated with butterflies and flowering vines painted in an earlier era.
The surroundings underlined the point that Ford Kyes, president and CEO, was there to make: St. Anthony's desperately needs an overhaul.
The hospital, at 1200 Seventh Ave. N, has embarked on a $30-million renovation - believed the biggest in decades, if not its 72-year history.
The redesign will include remodeling the hospital's third floor to put in a new cardiac care center, improving the hospital's cancer care facilities, and renovating the entries and exterior of the hospital.
The improvements will include a new auditorium for education programs.
"This one's lovely," Kyes joked. "We hate to leave it."
Some of the renovation has begun. The entire project should be complete in 2006.
St. Anthony's also is building a $37-million outpatient center at Carillon, set to be finished next spring, and plans a new imaging center on 54th Avenue S.
Hospital officials are working to raise $15-million in donations over the next three years to help pay for the renovations. Tuesday's presentation to community leaders included a plea for money.
The $3.2-million cardiac care center, due to be finished in October, will have a 10-bed coronary care unit, a cardiac catheterization lab, and a separate telemetry unit for patients with heart disease.
The same floor will house the renovated oncology center and a women's unit. The space is vacant now but once housed the hospital's obstetrics ward.
The renovation won't add services to the 400-bed hospital but bring services together and modernize facilities. The project will help the hospital focus on its mission, providing health care for adults. As baby boomers age, demand will increase for the hospital's cardiac and cancer centers, Kyes said.
For now, the new cardiac facilities won't include open-heart procedures. The hospital had asked the state for permission to do open-heart treatments, mainly so its doctors could perform angioplasties.
But other local hospitals already perform such procedures, and the state denied its first application. St. Anthony's officials at first planned to reapply this spring. They have delayed that but plan to reapply in the future.
Meanwhile, the renovation also will give the hospital a facelift outside.
"These lovely cooling towers which sit up on top of the hospital," Kyes said, pointing to a drawing, "unfortunately, we're going to lose those."
New entries and broad hallways are planned. People coming into the hospital now have to wind through Byzantine hallways just to find the elevators to go visit patients. Visitors often get lost and staffers are constantly asked for directions, Kyes said.
At Carillon, the St. Anthony's facility will include an urgent-care center, wellness center and physical therapy services. It also will house doctors' offices and an imaging center for X-rays, mammograms and bone density testing.