Newport firm expands St. Joseph

Alicia Robinson

A national construction firm with ties to Newport Beach will break

ground today on a $132-million expansion of St. Joseph Hospital in

Orange.

McCarthy Building Cos., one of California’s largest commercial

builders, will construct a four-story, 240,000-square-foot tower

containing 14 operating rooms and 150 patient care rooms, Project

Manager Patrick Peterson said.

McCarthy, which has its Southern California headquarters in

Newport Beach, has built numerous medical facilities, including a

tower addition now under construction at Hoag Hospital.

The new operating rooms will be about 50% larger than the ones in

the existing hospital and will be set up to handle state-of-the-art

equipment, said Larry Ainsworth, the president and chief operating

officer of St. Joseph Hospital.

“One of the major features and benefits of this facility is that

it will allow for new technology,” he said.

Doctors and patients are looking forward to the completion of the

new facility, said Dr. Arthur Goldstein, the hospital’s director of

perinatal services, who also runs a private obstetrics and gynecology

practice in Newport Beach.

“St. Joseph has always been preeminent in Orange County in

medicine, and their facilities were aging, and the time has come for

new buildings, new services, new equipment,” Goldstein said.

“Everybody likes something new and modern with all the bells and

whistles that come with it.”

The hospital now includes 450,000 square feet of patient

facilities. Hospital employees work in rooms that are about 40 years

old and weren’t designed for current technology, Ainsworth said.

Rooms in the new facility will be versatile to adapt to changing

technology, he said.

The community has been supportive of the new facility, with one

group of volunteers pledging to raise $1 million, and hospital

medical staff members promising $250,000, Ainsworth said.

Critical support also has come from the Sisters of St. Joseph of

Orange, the organization that founded the hospital in 1929, he said.

Peterson said site preparation work for St. Joseph’s addition

would begin Monday, and the facility should be completed in 2007.