Site work begins on Centegra's Huntley hospital

While construction won't begin in earnest until late spring, crews have begun moving dirt on the site that will house Centegra Health System's new 128-bed hospital in Huntley.

The Huntley village board approved final plans for the $233 million, 360,000-square-foot hospital project in December. The facility will be built on Centegra's existing campus at Reed and Haligus roads. It will offer 100 medical surgical beds, a women's center with 20 private obstetric rooms, and a helipad for transporting critical patients.

Construction is expected to take 30 months to complete and the hospital will begin treating its first patients in fall 2016, said Susan Milford, Centegra's senior vice president of strategy and development.

"We're excited at this point and just continuing to move forward," she said. "We're looking at doing a little bit more of a public celebration in the summer."

Centegra, McHenry County's largest employer, plans to employ more than 1,000 people at the Huntley hospital. Milford said there will be job fairs planned in the future.

During construction, existing parking lots for Centegra Health Center-Huntley and its Immediate Care Center, both located on the same campus as the future hospital, will be reconfigured and traffic flow rerouted, Milford said.

Centegra will permanently close the patient parking lot on the southeast side of Centegra Health Center-Huntley and patients will have to park in the lot directly in front of the Immediate Care Center. The result will be a one-way, counterclockwise drive around the perimeter of the lot leading to a drop-off zone in front of the health center and immediate care.

Starting next week, the main entrance into the Centegra campus off Haligus will be reconfigured. Visitors and employees will take the first right to access Centegra Health Bridge Fitness Center and Centegra Rehabilitation and Sports Medicine Clinic, or an immediate left to access the Centegra Health Center and Immediate Care Center.

Another parking lot to the east also will be permanently closed, reducing available spaces for patients. Employees will be required to park on the south side of the main drive and take a new walkway to the health center and immediate care facility.

"We are putting in a new medical office building as well next to the hospital that will be connected," Milford said. "We've designed this to be like a health and wellness campus feel. We are putting in some walking areas. We do have space for a future expansion and have planned for that as well."