What will Cone Hospital be like without construction workers outside?
History may be in the making at Moses H. Cone Hospital and it will be for nothing - as in nothing will be going on outside the hospital.
This will be bad news for contractors, but good news for visitors, who for decades have endured detours, dust, dirt and disruptions trying to get from their cars to the hospital's entrances.
When the hospital's new heart and vascular wing, going up at the south end of the main building, is done this spring that's it, at least for a while.
For the first time in decades, no new construction projects will follow immediately on the Cone campus, which forms a 1.2-mile square and is getting crowded.
Glenn Waters, Cone Health System's chief operating officer who has been at his job only three and a half years, checked with his secretary who has been there 35 years. She said she can't remember a time when something new wasn't being built.
The hospital opened with one building in 1953. It remained that way for a while.
But then construction became constant, with all projects having one thing in common: the same distinctive brick. The brick is long and narrow and over the years has acquired the name, "Moses Cone Blend." It comes from the same quarry in Pleasant Garden, according to Waters.
In the hospital's early years, even privately-owned support buildings, including the now-demolished Professional Village doctors office complex, used Moses Cone Blend to create uniformity.
The hospital campus - it's truly that, because it includes a dormitory - now numbers seven buildings and two parking decks.
In addition, the main building has been added on to countless times. The original building has been expanded from 190,545 square feet to 956,325, and that doesn't include the latest addition.
The main building is taller, longer and wider, with a striking atrium added to the front. Staff and visitors gather there for meals, to talk and to listen to a pianist.
Waters says space on the Cone campus is about tapped out. If there is new construction, it likely will go on top of what's already there. Waters raised the possibility of a satellite campus being created.
He says Moses Cone Health System is selecting a consultant for the Cone campus master plan, which is constantly being updated. The system tries to project what kind of services will in demand in the years ahead. The hospital staff foresees fewer beds needed for general hospital patients and more for intensive care patients. Additional space likely will be required for out-patient services.
Just because passersby and visitors won't be seeing cranes and consturciton crews for a while won't mean the hospital isn't changing. Inside, renovations will be taking place.
"There is always something," Waters says, "going on around the hospital."
