CENTRAL SQUARE  —  Oswego Health plans to open a new medical center this fall after it completes $5 million in renovations at a building in the village of Central Square.

The health-care organization has yet to set an exact opening date for the facility, which is located at 3045 East Ave. Oswego Health started work in January 2012 and will call the building the Central Square Medical Center when it opens later this year.

The renovated medical center will hold a new urgent-care office, laboratory, medical-imaging center, and physical-therapy center. It will also contain three operations that have been in the building since before work started: Primecare Medical Practice, a Lifetime Health Medical Group Pharmacy, and a Home Aides of Central New York office.

The primary-care practice, pharmacy, and home-aide office are remaining open as construction continues, according to Jeffery Coakley, vice president for strategic services at Oswego Health.

“We wanted to maintain some of the services that were already in the community, including the primary care,” he says. “Once this is functional, we really want to use this to help us attract other physicians to the community.”

Construction crews are completely redoing the building’s interior. Between 40 and 50 construction workers will be onsite at the peak of construction, according to Oswego Health. They are installing new ceilings, walls, and floors, as well as reworking its layout. In addition, plans call for installing new electrical service and a generator at the facility.

Other renovations include a 1,200-square-foot expansion that is under way, bringing the two-level building to 22,000 square feet. And the work encompasses some exterior changes, such as new canopies on the building’s front, rear, and side.

The front and rear canopies will give shelter to patients who are being dropped off by car, Coakley says. The side canopy will create a space for ambulances to pick up patients if they need to be taken to a hospital — although ambulances will not be dropping patients off at the center.

Plans also call for a new 14-foot sign in front of the building. And workers will replace the facility’s cedar siding with clapboard-style cement.

“There’s cedar siding here that we found was rotting in some areas,” Coakley says of the facility, which was built in 1977. “It’s an excellent building, but it’s over 30 years old.”

Hayner Hoyt Corp. of Syracuse is the general contractor for the project, and Syracuse–based King + King Architects LLP is its architect. That’s the same team that handled design and construction for Oswego Health’s Fulton Medical Center, a 70,000-square-foot facility that opened earlier this year at 510 S. Fourth St. in Fulton.

Oswego Health projects that the center will take 4,150 medical images, perform 10,000 lab draws, and host 2,000 physical-therapy visits in its first year. It predicts 38 patients per day will visit the urgent care, which will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, including weekends and holidays.

About 40 employees will work at the center once construction is completed, up from a total of around 10 who work in its private practice, pharmacy, and home-aide office, according to Coakley. Some current Oswego Health employees may transfer to the center, but a majority of the jobs will be new positions, he says. Oswego Health will post the positions on its website as they become available.

Project history

Oswego Health bought the facility on East Avenue in Central Square for $750,000 in April 2011, after Lifetime Health Medical Group decided to shutter its primary-care operations at the site, Coakley says. Lifetime Health Medical Group is a subsidiary of Rochester–based the Lifetime Healthcare Companies and a sister of Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Central New York’s largest health insurer.

The planned closing prompted the New York Department of Health to start talks with Oswego Health about the health-care organization expanding its reach in Oswego County, Coakley says.

“This is really part of what we’d consider a primary-care initiative in Oswego County,” he says. “It’s been a very long time coming.”

The state awarded Oswego Health and several partners $8.34 million in HEAL NY funding. Most of the funding, $5 million, is earmarked for the construction, acquisition, and equipment needed to create the Central Square Medical Center. The remaining funding will go toward renovations at other primary-care sites in Oswego County.

Those sites include Oswego Health-owned locations in Mexico, Parish and Phoenix, as well as Oswego County Opportunities, Inc. practices in Fulton and Oswego. They also include a Northern Oswego County Health Services, Inc. practice in Pulaski.

Work at the other sites is similar to that at the Central Square Medical Center, although it is not as extensive, Coakley says.

“We’re going to be improving facilities to bring them up to current codes and standards for the Department of Health, as well as implementing a new health-information system,” he says.

The Oswego Health system includes Oswego Hospital in Oswego, the Springside at Seneca Hill retirement community in Volney, and the Manor at Seneca Hill skilled nursing center in Volney, which has 120 beds. The nonprofit organization has 820 full-time employees and 164 part-time employees. It generated $110.9 million in revenue in 2011 and projects $115.4 million in revenue in 2012.   

DeWITT  —  Managing construction waste doesn’t just stop drywall scraps from clogging landfills, said a speaker at a May 24 seminar. It can keep cash in contractors’ pockets and lead to safer, happier workers. 

“From a contractor’s perspective, do you know why I really want to do this?” Stephen Beck, the chief sustainability officer at LeChase Construction Services, LLC, asked his audience. “Because by eliminating waste, I can improve my bottom line. Every dollar I don’t spend in terms of materials not incorporated in the project — you know, materials that I have to pay someone to take away — goes to my bottom line.” LeChase is headquartered in Rochester, but has Central New York offices in Syracuse, Ithaca, and Binghamton.

Beck, who is also LeChase’s director of science and technology and director of its commissioning services group, was the speaker at the seminar. The seminar, titled “Comprehensive Construction Waste Management,” looked at ways to reduce or eliminate wasted materials on the jobsite.

The U.S. Green Building Council’s Upstate Chapter arranged Beck’s presentation, which took place at the headquarters of the structural engineering, landscape architecture, and building science firm Klepper, Hahn & Hyatt at 5710 Commons Park Drive in DeWitt.

Construction activity contributes between 40 percent and 45 percent of all waste being placed in U.S. landfills, Beck said. Transporting building materials to those landfills and dumping it in the ground is an environmental problem, he added.

Then, he mentioned that construction waste is costly.

“That’s what got my management’s attention,” Beck said. “When I started showing them statistics — that we could easily affect a 10 percent reduction in our material costs on a project.”

Two years ago, LeChase established a minimum diversion threshold of 75 percent for all of its projects, according to Beck. In other words, the company diverts at least 75 percent of construction waste from landfills.

Beck recommended setting up a construction waste-management plan. It could include designing to prevent waste, planning to prevent it, and implementing techniques that reduce waste or reuse it on the jobsite. It could also include recycling. 

In broader terms, firms should reduce waste, reuse it, and recycle it, Beck said. Reducing waste is the most efficient, he said.

However, Beck conceded that designing to prevent waste is not always easy, particularly for contractors that aren’t involved in the design process.

“Designing to prevent waste — as a contractor, I can’t do that,” he said. “But I have good friends in the design community, and when we’re engaged in a construction-management relationship, it gives the contractor the ability to work directly with the design professionals.”

One design technique that can help cut down on waste is using standard modules of materials, Beck added.

“We know that drywall comes 4 feet wide,” he said. “It’s 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 feet tall. Well, work on a 2-foot increment. Because if you don’t, you’ve created waste by design.”

When it comes to planning, Beck suggested “just-in-time” delivery, where contractors arrange to limit the amount of material stored at a jobsite.

Such delivery can lead to more efficient work, as crews do not have to move large stocks of material back and forth to clear different areas, Beck said. It can also cut down on damage to materials, from light fixtures to masonry, he continued.

“Every time you handle a material, there’s an increased likelihood that the material’s going to be damaged,” he said. “And there’s an inherent waste there, because you’re wasting human effort, you’re wasting the fuel that’s used in the vehicle to move the material.”

Other waste-management techniques Beck discussed included setting up a central cutting area to encourage workers to reuse salvaged materials and asking vendors to take back pallets.

Those strategies can help keep the jobsite clean and improve workers’ moods, Beck added.

“Tradesmen don’t like to work in an unclean environment,” he said. “It slows them down. It’s a tripping hazard.”