The highly anticipated roadway and bridge to the parking garage is complete, and drivers can access the parking garage from the hospital’s main driveway.

 In the past, to park in the garage, visitors would drive down Lake Chabot Road and turn left at the Laurel Grove Hospital entrance. While the walkway to the hospital was easy to use, the drive was often seen as an inconvenience once visitors were already at the hospital entrance. No more!

Patients and visitors can now drive up to the main entrance to the hospital and drive right into the parking garage.

As you drive up the main roadway to the right of the hospital building, you will come to a stop sign and decision point. Here, you can turn left into the Patient Drop-Off/Pick-Up circle, or proceed forward and to the right to enter the garage. From the garage, there is a walkway leading to the Emergency Department entrance to off to the Main Entrance.

The changes highlight the “patient circle” as we like to call it. If you are dropping off or picking up a patient, you simply turn left into the circle. As you exit, you can return to the main driveway or continue up to the parking garage.

The north road is now closed to thru traffic past the Emergency Department. Cars must go either to the circle or to the garage once they reach the stop sign. The road past this spot is open only to ambulance traffic.

 On the west side of the campus, driving in from Stanton Avenue, patients can also park adjacent to the west entrance for easy access to the Imaging Center and the Ground Floor. There is no thru traffic past the West Entrance toward the Emergency Department, as this is now reserved for ambulance traffic only throughout construction.

Patient and visitor parking is still available in the lots near the main entrance to the hospital.

As always, we welcome your thoughts, ideas, questions and comments.

A closer look, through the fog, at the work over the previous week:

Moving the steel: the crane in action

The patient care tower emerges

A vew from inside: steel intersection between the podium and the tower

Upper foundation rebar installation

The contractors are moving at a swift pace to install the structual steel this week. Soon after the arrival of a 300-foot crane on site, the steel was moved into place and crews began erecting the structural steel pieces for the new hospital. By week’s end, the site was transformed.

In the meantime, workers are completing abatement at the Laurel Grove Hospital site prior to deconstruction of the biulding next week.  In the construction zone, workers are completing intensive work on the elevator pit as well as the new ramp for the parking garage. In the coming weeks, drivers will be able to access the parking garage directly from the main hospital driveway for convenient parking and access to the existing hospital and the future hospital.

View our live WebCam for up-to-date progress as well as a time-lapse view of the project since groundbreaking on July 1, 2009.

Significant Progress!

The upper foundation pad after completion of pier drilling.

The contractors have finished drilling all 560 piers for the foundation of our new hospital! While more work continues around those piers, including concrete, pile caps, grade beams and the underground electrical and plumbing work, this is a significant step forward for the project. Very quickly, the crews will begin erecting steel at specific locations of the site (weather permitting). Later this week, perhaps as early as Friday if the weather permits, the largest crane yet on site will arrive to handle the steel loads. The crawler crane will reach a maximum height of 300 feet when it moves to the upper foundation.

Garage bridge

Work is also moving along for the ramp connecting the garage to the main hospital driveway. Rain has caused delays in this area, setting the opening back to the end of February. This new access route will greatly improve traffic flow and convenience for our patients and visitors.

The empty corridors of Laurel Grove Hospital

Also this week, the contractor took over Laurel Grove Hospital to begin abatement and deconstruction of the facility. A great deal of effort went into closing down the facility after the last patients were discharged at the end of December. Much of the equipment found new life at Eden, San Leandro Hospital and other Sutter Health affiliates. And many other organizations received supplies, equipment, furniture and more as staff cleaned out the last of the hospital before turning it over to DPR Construction. Some of the organizations that received supplies and equipment include MedShare (with much of the equipment going to Haiti relief efforts), Castro Valley Unified School District, Davis Street Family Resource Center,  Fairmont Hospital and UC Berkeley Vision Sciences, to name just a few. We’ll share more information on this effort in a post from Eden Project Director Bob Bosold later this week. Laurel Grove is now secured by fencing as crews begin their detailed work before removing the building in March.

A look at the project site between the winter storms hitting the Bay Area this past week.