Petersburg Pilot -

The Petersburg Medical Center Board voted unanimously to pursue a final site plan for the new hospital facility based on the Knob Hill and Creek View conceptual designs during its meeting last Thursday.

The Knob Hill and Creek View concepts are both located at a site along Haugen Drive and behind the Elizabeth Peratrovich building.

The decision to continue designing the new facility based on the Knob Hill and Creek View concepts was also unanimously recommended by the project's steering committee.

Bettisworth North, the architecture firm working on the project, developed three preliminary site plans-Knob Hill, Creek View, and Excel-that were presented at a work session two weeks ago and again at the hospital board meeting.

Jay Farmwald, the medical center's representative for the project, said the Knob Hill and Creek View site has "a little more flexibility with respect to growth and change" when compared to the Excel site.

The hospital board had expressed some concerns about the Excel site-mainly about its size, the cost to develop the area, and its impacts on traffic.

While the Knob Hill and Creek View site is located off of Haugen Drive and would have new roads developed on site, the Excel site, located beyond the end of Excel Street, would have required extensions of Excel Street and 13th Street.

Those two extensions for the Excel site would have been considered off-site work and could not be paid for using the funding that PMC has secured for the project.

Hofstetter also reported that in a survey completed by over 50 PMC employees, 77% were in favor of either the Knob Hill or Creek View site rather than the Excel site.

Farmwald said the final recommended site plan will likely be a hybrid of the Knob Hill and Creek View concepts.

The hospital board also approved a direction to the CEO to enter into an initial contract with Dawson Construction to provide preconstruction services for $175,000.

According to Farmwald, bringing in a contractor as a partner during the design phase can help with providing cost estimates and advice on phasing strategies.

The contract will also include a provision that allows PMC to negotiate guaranteed maximum price amendments for construction phase services with Dawson Construction.

"Once the project is sufficiently designed, at the [medical center]'s discretion, PMC could then negotiate for pieces of the work with this contractor who now has full background on the project and they're knowledgeable enough that they can give you guaranteed maximum prices for pieces or all of the work," Farmwald said.