MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — WVU Medicine officials fulfilled a promise to their colleagues and patients in the Eastern Panhandle Tuesday with the groundbreaking for a $200 million patient tower at Berkeley Medical Center.
WVU Health System President and CEO Albert Wright was on hand and talked to the Panhandle News Network.
“The bed tower is a very large building that will sit right in front of Berkeley Medical Center,” he said.
The project will add 450 additional parking spaces first, then the patient tower with 325 private patient rooms.
“When we’re done it will be the second largest hospital in the WVU Health system,” Wright said.
Construction is set to occur in phases, with the work on the parking addition beginning this fall. The patient tower could open in early 2028.
Berkeley County Commission President Eddie Gochenour expressed appreciation for the investment as he looked addressed his neighbors.
“I look across the road and that was an apple orchard, an apple orchard,” Gochenour said. “And now all of the good things that happen there, all of the lives that have been saved.”
Mark O’Hern, the CEO of WVU Hospitals East, told those attending the ceremony that the expansion is patient-focused. He said pediatric oncology will be offered beginning this month in Martinsburg and will have a dedicated space in the new tower.
O’Hern introduced Micah, a local youngster whose cancer is in remission. Micah and his father Robert talked about the help they received through WVU Medicine Children’s in Morgantown and what a big help it will be to have some of those services close to home. “I’m glad they are building one that is closer,” Micah said.
CEO Wright said the project and another beginning late this fall or early next year at Jefferson Medical Center are part of a $260 million investment in an area of growth.
During his remarks just prior to the groundbreaking ceremony, Wright said in his office he has a map on which he has circled four areas around the state: Morgantown, Wheeling, Charleston, and Martinsburg. “Those are the sites that now we need to build up our breadth and depth of services the way we have in Morgantown. Because if we do that in those four sites, we actually cover the entire state.”
The $60 million campus expansion at Jefferson Medical Center will create a three-story ambulatory building and advanced lab and imaging spaces as well as a new infusion and cancer suite among other improvements.
More information about the Eastern Panhandle building projects can be found here.
Among those on hand were a number of Eastern Panhandle legislators, representatives from the Berkeley County Commission, the City of Martinsburg, the Martinsburg/Berkeley County Chamber of Commerce and the Berkeley County Economic Development Authority.
A specially recognized group was a table of retired nurses, whom Board President Scott Roach recognized as second moms and ladies he had grown up knowing.