The West Virginia University Board of Governors awarded a $4.79 million contract to W. Harley Miller Contractors Inc., of Martinsburg, to construct a new, two-story Eastern Division Clinical Campus.
The 36,650 square-foot building will house a 200-seat auditorium, a 40-seat classroom, several meeting rooms, a paper-and-electronic library, a Resident Suite and a computer-based study area. A 12 ,500 square-foot portion of the second floor will remain unfinished”shell”space. The facility will be built on two acres of land leased from City Hospital in Martinsburg.
“This state-of-the-art building, which includes classrooms, facilities for continuing medical education and long distance learning technology, will further our mission to improve the health of West Virginians through the education of health professionals,”said Mitch Jacques, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the Eastern Division of the West Virginia University Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., secured funding for the project from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Service Administration. The total cost of the project is $6.4 million, including the $4.79 building construction and $382,000 in site preparation work. The remaining funds will go toward architectural design and other fees.
Construction of the building is expected to start in September or October 2004, pending contract award approval from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Service Administration.
“This is a very exciting time for the people of Eastern West Virginia,”said Jay Bonfili, vice president for administration, WVU HSC Eastern Division.”The health care professionals we train in this facility will serve the region for decades to come.”
The Eastern Division provides community-based education in the health sciences, emphasizing family medicine, primary care and rural health. It is a cooperative effort with physicians, hospitals and other health care providers in the nine-county Eastern Panhandle of West VirginiaJefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, Mineral, Hardy, Grant, Pendleton and Tucker counties.