Did you know that in 2013, when Clovis Community Medical Center finishes its $300 million expansion, 115,000 cubic yards of earth will be moved? That’s enough to fill 14,500 dump trucks. And it will take another 1,200 trucks to deliver the 10,000 cubic yards of concrete to finish this monumental project.

The expansion started in 2008 with the renovation and enlargement of the Marjorie E. Radin Breast Care Center, a new endoscopy center, four new operating rooms, 300 more parking spaces, and additional room for the only Level 3 (highest level) fertility center between Los Angeles and Sacramento.

In early 2010, Clovis Community broke ground on the second phase of the project which will nearly triple the hospital’s size and give all patients a private room. This is the largest expansion Community Medical Centers has made since opening the six-story trauma and critical care building at its downtown hospital in 2007.

Besides a multi-level parking garage already completed, the expansion will add a dedicated Women’s and Infants’ Pavilion, new Special Care Nursery, 24 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds, 11 state-of-the-art surgical suites and 96 additional hospital beds.

The triangular, five-story bed-tower on the west side of the Clovis Community campus is going up fast. Construction crews estimate that the whole expansion project will use 2,000 tons of structural steel, equal to the weight of 1,080 Volkswagen Beetles.

In this east to west view of Clovis Community, the two-story steel and concrete shell shown just north of the lakeside bed tower and just east of the existing emergency department will expand the unit from 5,576 square feet to 24,400 – growing from a 13-bed emergency department to a 38-bed all-private room department. Currently, more than 35,000 patients are treated in the emergency department annually, and, once expanded, the emergency department will have the capacity to treat over 50,000 patients.

This story was reported by Erin Kennedy. She can be reached at ekennedy@communitymedical.org.