Community Regional Medical Center’s roof-top helipad will be a stop for county and city representatives as they fly in to tour the Valley’s only burn and Level 1 trauma centers with California High-Speed Rail Authority chairman Curt Pringle on Thursday, April 15, at 3 p.m.

The Community Regional tour is part of a Fresno city and county collaborative effort dubbed “Fresno Works,” designed to attract the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s (CHSRA) interest to build a heavy maintenance facility in Fresno. The location is still undetermined but will be somewhere in the Central Valley and Fresno Works officials say the facility will mean the creation of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue.

CHSRA board members were invited by Fresno Works officials to tour key areas in Fresno that might attract the board to choose the Fresno location. The county listed Community Regional as the only burn and Level 1 trauma center from Los Angeles to Sacramento and the centers were chosen as a unique attribute of the city and county for the tour by Fresno Works.  As one of the main points in its executive summary, Fresno Works lists “extensive emergency response and medical services headquartered in Fresno.”

 Accompanying Pringle on the tour will be Mayor Ashley Swearengin and supervisors Susan Anderson and Henry Perea.

Community Regional and the Fresno Redevelopment Agency earned state recognition in March for its 15-year partnership that transformed a blighted downtown area into the 58-acre academic regional medical center campus it is today. The project is the largest and longest redevelopment project in Fresno County history.

This story was reported by Mary Lisa Russell. She can be reached at mrussell@communitymedical.org.