Commissioners spent more than two hours Monday afternoon listening to pitches by two architectural teams presenting preliminary drawings that determine the scope and direction of remodeling Eureka Springs Hospital. Commissioners will award the job Nov. 15.
Laura Morrison said Morrison Architects teamed with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects to prepare a proposal, and Paul Gregory of PSW said he has more than 35 years of experience in healthcare planning as an architect. He explained that in remodeling projects around the state, PSW has proved it can stay within the owner’s budget on jobs of all sizes.
Gregory showed a computer representation of the Arkansas Children’s Northwest campus in Springdale, scheduled to open in January 2018. He said in those development plans, they used technology enabling a viewer to take a virtual tour of the interior, thus able to improve plans via the tour.
Morrison provided a timeline of her firm’s experience with ESH beginning in 2003. After Allegiance Health Care took over management of ESH in 2007, the Morrisons took on other projects with Allegiance, including plans for a new facility on Passion Play Road and then at the Victoria Inn site, neither of which was ever built. In 2015, they developed preliminary plans for what could have become not only the site of a hospital, but a medical campus at the US 62 site at the western edge of town, which also was not built.
She said her team has extensive experience with the present ESH site, so they would not be starting over. Architect Mike Finefield of the Morrison team said they want to bring experience and expertise to accomplish the commission’s goals while building a relaxing, nurturing environment for patients and place physicians want to work.
“We’re ready to start anytime you are,” Finefield said.
Tom Johnson, of the Eureka Springs area for 45 years but now based in Ft. Smith, told commissioners he had teamed with Bates and Associates Architects for their proposal. He said in 1991 he was part of a Carroll County Health Care Study, so he’s familiar with the healthcare needs of the area, and claimed there would be no learning curve. He used that experience to design Siloam Springs Memorial Hospital.
Paul Sabal of Bates gave a rundown of the breadth of their long history as architects in the healthcare field. He showed slides of several Mercy facilities in Missouri and Arkansas that Bates designed, including expansion of the facility in Berryville. Their projects have been both rural and small all the way up to the seven-story Mercy Hospital in Rogers, and he said each was designed to fit location and budget.
Dennis Markey of the Bates office in Rogers showed slides of drone photos of ESH and its surroundings. He used the overhead shots to illustrate four preliminary options for expansion, each having very little impact on the existing facility. One option was to cover part of the parking lot with a two-story addition but keep parking underneath. Another was to create an extension diagonally from a back corner down the slope which made use of an otherwise hardly usable area on the property. Other options were variations of additions to the backside of the existing building.
The Bates team claimed their plans for improving lighting, HVAC and other utilities would vastly improve performance and save money on utilities right away.
Commissioners will make a decision Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 1 p.m., at the ECHO Clinic.