Expansion and renovation projects designed to make room for more patients and improve efficiency continue at local hospitals.

Franciscan St. Margaret Health hospital in Dyer is in the midst of a project that will expand capabilities of its emergency, laboratory and surgical departments.

The work has a target completion date of Dec. 31, said Dan Ratko, hospital manager for project construction.

Work started in the fall. Recent extreme cold has been an obstacle but is not expected to delay the completion date.

"The weather has been a challenge," he said.

The hospital is remaining fully functional through the construction process, he said.

The project includes a 3,500-square-foot addition to the emergency department, a state-of-the-art trauma room that will double the size of the current facility, an isolation room for infectious patients and new, specialized patient exam rooms, according to the hospital.

The laboratory department improvements will increase efficiency. And, improvements to the surgery department include a 760-square-foot surgical suite and a new pre-admission testing space.

Construction also continues at Community Hospital in Munster, which is undergoing a multi-phase project to add more private rooms, expand the main surgical services area, double the capacity of the neonatal intensive care unit and provide advanced technology and accommodations to care for more stroke and heart patients.

Marie Forszt, director of marketing for the hospital, said construction of the new floors is on target to be completed in mid-May.

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Pardon their dust: expansion continues at local hospitals

Published: Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014, 9:00p.m. Updated 12 hours ago

The inside of the old Lamp Theatre on Main Street in Irwin is a dark, cold, empty shell.

Mortar missing from the joints of the exposed terra-cotta block walls allows daylight and frigid air to stream into the building. A few pieces of dirty, velvet curtain and tattered wallpaper are all that remain from the days before the 76-year-old theater closed in 2004.

But the people leading the effort to restore the former movie house say the condition of the building is just about where it needs to be.

We've really been focusing on gutting the inside of the building so we can begin construction, said Councilman John Cassandro, who serves on the Relight the Lamp Committee. So it's pretty exciting that we're finally getting to the end of the demolition phase of this project. It's a milestone.

Since spring, volunteers have been busy ripping out old plaster, tearing down walls and removing piles of old paint cans, rusted wire, cinder block and debris that accumulated in the building over the years.

The theater seats need a good cleaning, but they are in pretty good shape, so we have them stored in Greensburg at the Westmoreland County Cultural Trust, Cassandro said. But there wasn't much of anything else that could be salvaged.

The theater was donated to the trust in 2006, which started remodeling in early 2009. After Irwin officials presented the Trust with a proposal to develop the building, it was sold to the borough in March for $1.

Irwin officials say the roughly $600,000 worth of work done by the trust put the Lamp project within reach.

There is no way we would have been able to take this on if we had to come up with all the money, Cassandro said. But now we feel confident that we can get this done.

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Irwins Lamp Theatre nears end of demo phase

Published: Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014, 12:31a.m. Updated 9 hours ago

By May, the Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control Authority hopes to replace the postcard- sized bills it sends out with ones printed on standard-sized paper.

One of our main complaints is that the bills get lost in the mail, said authority manager Bob Kossak.

The authority budgeted about $148,000 to buy new software and train personnel.

Over the next month, the authority will be testing the system, which they hope to begin using by April 21.

The system will improve customer service by allowing staff to search for information using a variety of parameters such as property owner name.

The new and old systems will run simultaneously until it's determined that there aren't any glitches, Kossak said.

Weather slows plant construction

Work on the authority's $28 million expansion project is progressing, but slowly because of the weather, said Craig Bauer of KHL Engineering.

The project was about 60 percent completed in January and is expected to be done by fall.

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Kiski Valley authority to upgrade billing system, software

CHARLES TOWN - An Inwood man accused of attempting to bilk a 77-year-old woman out of more than $2,500 after allegedly paving her driveway without her or her husband's permission was arrested Tuesday on one felony count of attempted false pretenses.

Timothy Lee Hamilton, 40, of Harranda Court, was later arraigned and released from custody Wednesday on $7,500 bail.

According to court records, Detective Sgt. Victor Lupis of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department received at call from Jefferson County Central Dispatch at about 3:31 p.m. Tuesday for a possible kidnapping complaint at the Bank of Charles Town off Charles Town Road.

The alleged victim was described as an elderly woman who was attempting to withdraw cash from her account. Further information provided to police indicated two individuals, later identified as Hamilton and a juvenile, brought the woman to the bank and were waiting for her in a sports utility vehicle, records show.

Police arrived at the bank minutes later, where they found the accused and the alleged victim. The woman told police she was brought to the bank by the accused to withdraw $2,500 in cash for driveway work that neither she nor her elderly husband had authorized at their Jefferson County home. The woman said Hamilton and other unidentified men came to her porch earlier in the day asking her and her husband if they wanted their driveway paved. The woman and her husband denied their services, records show.

The alleged victim told police that when she left her home to walk her dog, Hamilton and the other individuals approached her and said they had gotten her husband's permission to pave the driveway. The woman's husband suffers from Alzheimer's disease, she said, and the alleged victim told police she knew he wouldn't have given them permission to do so. When the elderly woman walked back to her residence, she found that Hamilton and the other unknown individuals had dumped and packed crushed stone on her driveway. Hamilton then allegedly approached the woman and told her that she owned him $4,000 for the job, records show.

The alleged victim told police she gave Hamilton $400 in cash, and the accused then offered to drive her to the bank to get $2,500 "owed" to him, records show.

The woman agreed to go to the bank with Hamilton and a juvenile male. The bank branch manager told police that the alleged victim, who didn't have a history of making large withdrawals, appeared nervous when she arrived at the bank. The manager also told police she knew the woman had never been in the type of vehicle Hamilton had dropped her off in, so she notified the police, records show.

Hamilton was placed under arrest and the juvenile was released to the custody of his mother. During processing, Hamilton declined to provide a statement to police and declined to identify the other individuals who allegedly accompanied him to the victim's home, records show.

- Staff writer Edward Marshall can be reached at 304-263-8931, ext. 182.

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Man charged with scamming elderly woman

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