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Holy Cross Hospital has awarded Miller Construction Co. a $6 million contract to expand the facility's outpatient imaging department. Miller, which disclosed the news, said a key component of the 14,000-square-foot expansion will be guiding an 18,000-pound MRI machine into place within the department, which is at the core of the Fort Lauderdale hospital. .
Rich Tarrant, while serving on Fletcher Allen Health Care's board of trustees in late 2001, gave hospital President William Boettcher a glowing vote of confidence just as evidence of a hospital construction project scandal was surfacing.
"His courage to take a strong position when community activists attack is refreshing," Tarrant, now the Republican Senate candidate, said of Boettcher in a Nov. 12, 2001, e-mail to board Chairman Phil Drumheller. "We are lucky to have Bill Boettcher."
Nine months later, Boettcher was forced to resign after the state Banking, Insurance, Securities & Health Care Administration alleged hospital administrators had lied to state regulators to conceal $200 million in project costs.
Boettcher pleaded guilty in 2004 to a federal criminal conspiracy charge in connection with the scandal and is serving a two-year prison sentence.
DURHAM -- State officials inspected Eagles Landing after North Carolina Central asked the state to buy the privately-owned dorm. Inside, they found trash dangerously packed into a garbage chute, which they called a fire hazard, sprinklers that did not work, and water damage. In a letter to the director of Durham's Inspections Department, officials from the State Construction Office said, "Regardless of whether the state purchases Eagles Landing or chooses not to...there needs to be immediate correction of all life safety items by the private owner." "We, of course, believe the building is safe," said Rosalind Fuse-Hall, who is with the NCCU Real Estate Foundation, which is the group that owns the dorm.
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Hurricane Katrina sped along plans for a spate of new high-rise residential towers, but more than a quarter of the proposed housing units have already been killed or put on hold. Out-of-town investors "are circling like eagles" with capital ready to invest in downtown projects, said Kurt Weigle, executive director of the Downtown Development District. And inquiries from outside developers have increased five-fold, possibly because of special tax incentives being made available to building projects in hurricane-impacted areas. But not all of the residential projects will be built, experts say. The pricetags on most of the announced projects have risen 30 percent due to escalating prices on labor and building materials, developers say. That big of an increase is giving pause to both the developers behind the condo towers and the potential condo buyers who, in some cases, are backing out of sales contracts when presented with the higher prices.
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