HELENA - It's out with the old at Shodair Children's Hospital, with the hospital fully moved into its new facility and crews got work on demolishing their old building.
Crews started to swipe and tear down a part of Shodair's old building with bulldozers on Monday, May 8, 2023. The oldest section of the building was built back in 1982.
Shodair Children's Hospital CEO Craig Aasved watched the demolition with mixed emotions.
"This building has served a lot of kids. There's been a lot of employees that have worked here and, you know, my predecessor put a lot of time into building this building to what it is today. So that part is sad. But then you got to look forward as progress," said Aasved.
The demolition comes as the hospital has moved into its brand new facility.
Aasved told MTN News that some of the old hospital will remain, and may continue to help care for people in need.
"Part of the building will stay and that's where people like me are located right now. But we're also in the middle of discussions of leasing that out to somebody else for adult psychiatric services. And if that happens, we will then find a different place for administrative people," said Aasved.
When demolition is complete, much of the area will be used for expanded parking for patients, their family and staff.
"Everything else will come down. But you're looking at here and it will be a parking lot that will be for not only family members, you know, patients, family members, but for staff as well," said Aasved.
As for how long demolition is expected to take, they estimate early October.
"Everything will be tore down within the next six weeks," said Aasved, "by the time there's parking and there's the landscaping and that we're done here, they're saying this fall. So we estimated October 1st and that's when the construction of our projects should be done here at Shodair."
