Sarasota Memorial building Courtyard Tower

A few months into Sarasota Memorial Health Care System's largest construction project in decades, work on a new Courtyard Tower is running on schedule.

Skanska is developing a nine-story building to replace the oldest wings of Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

When it is completed in 2013, the new building will provide the 806-unit hospital with more private rooms, a new courtyard entrance and a redesigned lobby.

“It's not every day you build something of this magnitude,” Sarasota Memorial CEO Gwen MacKenzie says in a press release. “The main campus improvements represent the largest construction project at the hospital in half a century.”

The tower will feature a total of 220 patient beds, facilities for psychiatric care, cardiovascular, orthopedics and medical-surgical units, labor and delivery suites and a 32-bed expanded neonatal intensive-care unit.

The new tower construction is being financed primarily through the bond market, philanthropy and operating profits reinvested into the hospital's capital budget.

The new tower is the keystone of a $250 million campus improvement project for the hospital. The hospital also plans to expand its surgery suites and critical care center and construct a pedestrian bridge connecting the south parking garage to the critical care center.

The medical facility provides care to more than 700,000 patients a year.