Community invited to celebrate Huntley hospital project HUNTLEY – Residents next weekend can literally make their mark on the $233 million hospital already being constructed at the Centegra Health System campus in Huntley. To celebrate the historic project, Centegra will host a community beam-raising event at the Huntley location in the late morning Saturday, after its annual Family Health Fest. Residents can sign the beam and watch it hoisted into the air. The signed beam will eventually be visible from inside the new hospital once it’s complete in 2016, said Susan Milford, senior vice president of strategy and development. “It is their hospital,” Milford said. “They can be part of its history by actually signing a beam that will be visible inside the hospital once it is completed.” The 128-bed Huntley hospital was only the second new hospital approved in Illinois in the past 30 years, and the beam-raising event allows residents to make a permanent imprint on the project, Milford said. The event officially starts at 9 a.m. Saturday with Centegra’s annual Family Health Fest. It features various activities, including free bike helmet fittings for the first 300 children in attendance, live music, obstacle courses and health screenings. Residents can enter a safe construction zone on the new hospital grounds to sign the beam and watch it be raised about 11 a.m. A free open swim session for families follows the event at the Health Bridge Fitness Center. Centegra is expecting about 500 people for the family fest and about 200 community leaders, public officials and health system representatives for the beam-raising event. “Beam raisings have often been a way to celebrate the construction of new buildings,” said Chief Executive Officer Michael Eesley. “We chose this option because it welcomes the community to see the hospital in the process of it being built.” The celebratory event comes after months of initial construction activity at the Huntley hospital site near Haligus and Algonquin roads. Construction crews already have put down the hospital foundations and installed new utilities. By fall, residents should be able to see the exterior look of the new hospital as construction shifts to the interior. “It takes quite a while to build the inside of a six-story hospital, so the process will go on until we complete construction in the spring of 2016,” Eesley said. If you go Centegra Family Health Fest and beam-raising event: • Family Fest activities last from 9 to 11 a.m., Saturday, July 12, at Centegra’s Huntley campus, with a Huntley hospital beam-raising event after the fest.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 09:12:59 +0000