Business

Workers race to finish Health Sciences Center

Workers don't knock off at 5 at the Health Sciences Center. Hundreds of workers are on site to finish construction of the building in time for classes in August.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 29, 2016

Workers are racing to finish the $30 million Health Sciences Center in time for the arrival of Blue Ridge Community College students in less than five weeks.

“I’ve never seen a project that had such an army of workers on it around the clock,” Dr. Bill Medina, the chairman of the Pardee Hospital Board of Directors, said during the regular board meeting on Wednesday.
Medina drove by around 6 o’clock Tuesday evening and saw construction workers working inside and out. “I drove by again about 10 till 11 and they had a big spotlight and a smaller army of people still working on the concrete steps.”

A joint project of the city of Hendersonville, Henderson County, Pardee, BRCC and Wingate University, the building will house two floors of classrooms plus Pardee's new cancer treatment center.
Chief Administrative Officer Johnna Reed told the hospital governing board the community college and Wingate will occupy the building in the coming weeks. When Pardee takes occupancy in October it will install a linear accelerator, a device that uses targeted high-energy X-rays to destroy cancer cells. An open house is planned for November. Pardee’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, occupying the ground floor of the 100,000-square foot center, will begin seeing patients on Dec. 5, Reed said.
Reed told the board that general contractor Vannoy & Sons Construction is on schedule to finish the work by the time BRCC’s fall semester opens on Aug. 1. Wingate’s school year opens two weeks later.
In the next 30 days teachers “will be moving their boxes in, moving their furniture in, getting their classes set up,” Reed said. “You’ll see a heightened amount of activity in that cancer center.”
Responding to a frequently asked question about parking, she said the hospital would provide 456 spaces — 79 more than the code requirement based on the uses in the three-story building.
“We anticipate we’ll have plenty of parking space,” she said.