Exempla Healthcare is planning to build a new, five-story tower on the northeast side of its Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge.
It will cost $225 million, said Bob Malte, the hospital’s chief executive.
The project would tear down part of the existing hospital – part of which dates to 1923 – and update part.
The renovation won’t add beds to the hospital, which is licensed for 400 beds. It would make all patient rooms private and bigger, Malte said.
The 200,000-square -foot tower would include 10 new operating rooms, a new obstetrics delivery unit and neonatal intensive-care unit.
The plans still have to be approved by Wheat Ridge, said Pam Porter, the hospital’s director of business development.
Hospital officials hope to present the plans to the Wheat Ridge City Council in July.
The historic chapel that sits next to the hospital will stay, Malte said.
Exempla Lutheran traces its roots to 1903, when a church-sponsored tent city grew up at the site to care for tuberculosis patients.
The first permanent hospital was built there in 1923.
Last year, the hospital, at 8300 West 38th Ave., treated 19,819 patients, and 68,524 people came through its emergency room. The hospital employs 2,100 people.
The tower will be the final portion of a renovation that began five years ago. So far, Exempla has spent $75 million on projects including a new inpatient cancer unit, a heart and body imaging center, an 18-bed hospice and a neurological intensive-care unit.
Exempla officials hope to begin demolition of the old portions of the hospital early next year, and finish the project by 2010.
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
