City working out project coordination kinks with PCMC

The city of Pipestone and Pipestone County Medical Center (PCMC) are working out coordination issues between PCMCs $30 million expansion project and a proposed $900,000 street and utility project the city wants to undertake this year on the street the hospital is temporarily using for all access.

PCMC made public its concerns about the timing of the street project during a Feb. 17 assessment hearing. With all public entrances to PCMC temporarily relocated to the Fifth Ave. SW side of the complex, hospital officials were concerned about disruption, confusion and safety issues for those entering and exiting the facility.

Weve known that the project has been out there for some time and were very supportive of it, said Brad Burris, PCMC administrator/CEO. We knew with the ambulance entrance over there and emergency and the receiving dock, there were going to be some adjustments during the construction period. Its just our main concern is the whole temporary parking lot is there at the same time. Its a burden to the folks were trying to take care of. Once we get that flipped back to Fourth (Ave. SW in 2016) then we think it would be a better situation.

The $900,000 project on Fifth Ave. SW from 13th St. SW to Ninth St. SW includes a new street, curb and gutter, along with full replacement upsizing of the existing storm sewer and new sanitary sewer and water lines.

Though the city initially scheduled the project for 2016, the City Council ordered an engineering report to do the project this year. Travis Winter with Bolton & Menk said meetings that took place between the PCMC construction coordinator and the city led to a preference for the work to be done this year.

I did tell (the hospital) that originally we had this for 2016 and we moved it up for 2015 because there was some storm sewer work were doing in coordination with the hospital/clinic project and we felt it was beneficial for the city versus putting it off for a year, said Jeff Jones, city administrator, during the Feb. 17 meeting.

Burris said PCMCs preference would actually be that the project be deferred until our construction is done, and Pete Swanson, PCMC plant manager, said the hospital didnt need the storm sewer upgrade until spring 2016.

Winter said the storm sewer installation was needed prior to the hospital building its new main parking lot off Fourth Ave. SW.

There would be flooding in the parking lot there if we didnt have an outlet, Winter said. Just generally you have to have an outlet before building a parking lot because even when excavating, constructing the base, there gets to be a significant amount of water. Essentially you have a bathtub and you cant drain it if theres no outlet there. Finalizing construction could be very difficult if our storm improvement wasnt available for the hospital.

He explained during the Feb. 17 meeting that the majority of the utility work is south of 10th Street SW, so we think we can construct a lot of this without having an impact on the hospital. The critical phase is when the street surface is built, but that could be done in segments to assure hospital access.

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City working out project coordination kinks with PCMC