Hunzinger builds ‘little project that could’

Hunzinger Construction Co. and a crew of 700 workers silenced skeptics when they miraculously built the 210,000-square-foot Covenant Healthcare Systems St. Joseph Outpatient Center in only 10 months.

“This job was all about people and people finding ways to get things done and being a shark,” said Hunzinger Vice President and Senior Project Manager Tim Van Dyn Hoven. “There were a lot of people out there who said there was no way we could get this done. But this was the little project that could.”

Milwaukee-based Eppstein Uhen Architects Inc. and BLM Architects, Philadelphia, designed the five-story, $44 million ambulatory care center to consolidate Covenant’s operations from three separate locations. The construction timetable was shortened because Covenant had to schedule around the relocation of services from its three other buildings.

“We committed over a year ago to this date, and we hit it to the day,” Van Dyn Hoven said. “Everything you can imagine to have in a hospital you have in this building except for the beds for overnight care.”

The state-of-the-art outpatient center opened to patients on schedule on June 1. Van Dyn Hoven said the project also required demolition of two hotels on the Mayfair Road site and construction of an 836-stall, five-story parking structure.

Van Dyn Hoven said it was miraculous that the project team could complete the project, which normally would’ve taken about a year and a half, in 10 months and one day. He chalked up the success to months of preplanning, an A-team of subcontractors and a relentless work force.

“This job was multiple shifts, extended hours, just everything you can imagine,” Van Dyn Hoven said. “There’s an awful lot of happy people. There’s an awful lot of tired people, I’ll tell you. We poured concrete almost every day from the start of this project.”