UAB breaks ground on cancer radiation center
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
ANNA VELASCO
News staff writer
UAB Hospital has started construction on a radiation oncology center where more than 30,000 cancer patients a year will get treatment.
The Hazelrig-Salter Radiation Oncology Facility should open in a year and replace the 30-year-old Lurleen B. Wallace Tumor Institute.
The $22.5 million, 50,000-square-foot building will front Sixth Avenue South, between 17th and 18th streets, and sit across from UAB's Spain Rehabilitation Center.
The new center will have larger vaults for the massive radiation equipment used today and more space for the hospital's ever increasing number of cancer patients from Alabama and the Southeast.
"The program has simply outgrown the clinical and administrative space we have now," said David Hoidal, UAB Health System's chief executive officer, at Tuesday's groundbreaking ceremony.
The radiation center ultimately will connect to the future Women and Infants' Facility. Construction of that center for obstetrics and women's services should begin this spring. The University of Alabama at Birmingham has spent the last several years relocating restaurants and a warehouse to clear the city block for the projects and had to use its power of eminent domain to force several property owners to move.
The Wallace Tumor Institute likely will be used for cancer research once the radiation center relocates.
The new radiation center not only will be able to house the latest technology but also will provide a better healing atmosphere, important for patients who sometimes get treatment five days a week for six to eight weeks, said Dr. James A. Bonner, UAB's radiation oncology chairman. Patient rooms will be more cheerful. Children and adults will have separate waiting rooms. An open space next to the center with trees, benches and a fountain will be a place of reflection and renewal for patients and their families.
"It will have at its heart a very holistic and human approach to medicine," Bonner said.
Retired businessman Jim Limbaugh has donated $1 million to create the James Limbaugh Family Park of Hope at Sixth Avenue South and 18th Street, UAB officials announced Tuesday. The former automobile dealership owner gave the gift in honor of his wife, Phyllis, who died of lymphoma cancer in 1981.
UAB has raised $11 million from more than 400 donors for the radiation oncology facility and hopes to raise $4 million more. The largest gift, and one of the largest in UAB history, came from Mountain Brook businessman W. Cobb "Chip" Hazelrig, who donated $5 million. Hazelrig is giving the money in honor of his parents, Virginia and the late J. William Hazelrig, and their longtime friends, Drs. Paul and Merle Salter.
The 600,000-square-foot, $140 million Women and Infants' Facility should be completed in early 2009, a year after the radiation center opens.
E-mail:
avelasco@bhamnews.com