DRUM CLINIC EXPANSION BEGINS

FORT DRUM — As the summer construction season winds down, contractors on post are about to frame a 49,500-square-foot addition to the Guthrie Medical Clinic, and start interior work on barracks and company headquarters buildings.

The projects will cost $82 million, and will almost double the primary care facility for soldiers and families and create a complex for wounded soldiers assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 85th Infantry. The majority of that, $54.5 million, will be spent on the wounded soldier complex and will be completed in two phases.

One of the best features of the new construction, according to Maj. Ross A. Davidson, the chief of the Logistics Division for the medical command on Fort Drum, is the geothermal heating and cooling system.

"It's a closed-loop system that uses groundwater to heat and cool the buildings. There will be about 100 wells at an average of 400 feet deep to reach a stable water temperature of about 50 degrees," he said. "It's a huge energy costs savings and a reduction in the use of our fossil fuels."

The geothermal system will draw hot air from the building in the summer and draw warmth from the groundwater in the winter to help heat the Guthrie Clinic. The system will be underneath a new parking lot on the east side of the expansion.

Maj. Davidson said the system has been put in use elsewhere on post, mainly in barracks complexes. The system also will support the new wounded soldier barracks building and will heat the sidewalk to make snow removal in the winter easier.

"It's been used elsewhere across the Army," said Maj. Davidson. "But this will be the first Army (medical department activity facility) with a geothermal project."

In the first phase of the wounded-soldier complex, where interior work will begin in the next few weeks, crews will build two company headquarters buildings and barracks with 144 rooms. The second phase, which will not begin until spring, will add a battalion headquarters, a new Soldier and Family Assistance Center and additional barrack rooms.

Maj. Davidson expects the first soldiers will move into the barracks in spring 2010.

The addition and alteration of the Guthrie clinic is more complicated, he said, because the building is in use every day during construction. The addition will be completed sometime in early spring, said Maj. Davidson.

Then comes the transition.

The addition will become home to the physical and occupational therapy offices, the pharmacy and the family care offices. Those offices are in the old structure and will move incrementally to the new space.

After the offices have moved, renovation and alterations will made to the existing 69,500-square-foot building. That will include about $8 million in new equipment.

At the same time, Connor Troop Medical Clinic, which serves wounded and injured soldiers on post, will get a new physical therapy clinic and wounded-soldier clinic in modular buildings.

"As the mission for the wounded soldiers has grown, it was flooding the Connor Clinic and they needed more room over there," said Maj. Davidson.