Checkup

Construction Corner

The hospital is taking shape . . .

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. . . including the canopy over the main entrance.

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A rendering of the completed Stabile Building.

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As springtime envelops North Florida, visitors will find more than azaleas blooming on the Mayo Clinic campus. Just a year away from the still-on-schedule opening of the hospital and expanded Mayo Building, and passers-by are getting an idea of what the new building will look like now that its exterior is almostcompleted. But what's taking shape on the inside of the 650,000-square-foot facility is exciting as well. All of the concrete floors have been poured, and on the fourth and fifth floors of the hospital workers are installing electrical wiring and mounting ceilings and light fixtures. Patient rooms on the second floor aret aking shape as drywall is installed, and some surgery areas on the fourth floor are getting their first coats of paint.Now that the big tasks — steel, concrete, exterior skin and glass — are done, it's a matter of putting in walls, electrical and mechanical equipment and completing all the detail work. Elevators are being installed and the patterns on the terrazzo floor in the Mayo Building lobby are emerging. By summer, the lobby, featuring a beautiful Dale Chihuly blown glass chandelier, will be substantially complete.

Elsewhere on the campus, other projects have also gotten off the ground. Near the new Mayo Building and hospital sits the Stabile Building, home to several of the clinic's administrative departments. The original two-story building, Stabile South, used to be the campus central utility plant before it was converted into offices in 1999. Stabile North, built as a four-story structure in 2003, is growing by two more stories and 50,000 square feet. Project manager Mark Miles says that the addition's exterior is scheduled to be completed in early summer and the inside will be finished by late 2007.

The expansion will house administrative staff and expanded lab facilities, including the core lab for the clinic's outpatient and hospital services as well as Mayo Medical Labs, which provides laboratory services for external clients.

Hospice's Beaches Center for Caring.

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A few hundred yards away in the sprawling woods, another building is taking shape. Community Hospice of Northeast Florida broke ground last summer on a 23,000-square-foot, 16-bed inpatient facility. The Beaches Center for Caring will provide much needed hospice services to terminally ill patients and their families in the Beaches and Southside area. The hospice is leasing the land from Mayo Clinic on a long-term basis as part of its ongoing working relationship with the clinic. Mayo and Community Hospice have shared care of patients since shortly after Mayo came to Jacksonville 20 years ago.

"We are proud to be working closely with Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville and are so pleased to be able to provide Beaches and Southside residents with inpatient services at a location close to home," says Susan Ponder-Stansel, Community Hospice of Northeast Florida president and CEO.

The facility is scheduled to open in late summer.