Hoag gets $2.5 million gift

Deepa Bharath

NEWPORT BEACH -- Hoag Hospital has received a $2.5-million grant from

the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, bringing it closer to raising

the $50 million needed to build its planned Women’s Pavilion.

The new 309,000-square-foot, seven-story building will specialize in

women’s services and will house a full-fledged maternity unit, a breast

care center and an imaging center that will be named after the Beckmans.

It is set to be completed in 2005.

That center is expected to include six mammography rooms, one biopsy

room, two ultrasound rooms and consultation rooms.

The grant “means a great deal to the community” because it will also

fund the hospital’s breast cancer research project, said Ron Guziak,

executive director of the Hoag Hospital Foundation.

“It will allow Hoag to partner with Stanford University. That we

believe has great potential,” he said.

That collaborative project, also to be named after the Beckmans, will

focus on research for new magnetic resonance diagnostic testing and novel

therapies for breast cancer treatment.

Guziak said the Beckman Foundation’s decision to award the grant for

this project showed it cared about scientific advancement, not just

building structures.

The grant brings the total money raised for the pavilion to $42

million.

In many ways, the grant can be seen as a culmination of Arnold

Beckman’s work with Hoag Hospital, he said.

Beckman was active at the hospital for more than three decades,

serving on the board of directors and the foundation’s board. In 1990, he

was named chair emeritus of the Hoag Hospital Foundation board in

recognition for years of his leadership and support.

Guziak said the site for the new building is being prepared.

“We’ll start laying the foundation in the next three months,” he said.

He said the new facility will treat a variety of patients although it

is to be called the Women’s Pavilion.

The hospital owes a large part of its success to the generosity of the

community, Guziak said.

“I think we have been able to communicate to individuals and

philanthropists that we’re a free-standing organization that wants to

have the best facilities available to our patients,” he said. “I believe

that’s why people have been so generous.”

* Deepa Bharath covers public safety and courts. She may be reached at

(949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at o7 deepa.bharath@latimes.comf7 .