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It was unable to get bond financing for the project amid a credit freeze at the time.
Being forced to hold off, it turns out, will pay off.
On Friday, Penn State's trustees approved final plans for the free-standing $244 million Hershey Children's Hospital and expanded parking garage on the medical center campus.
And because credit markets have thawed and construction costs have fallen, Hershey officials say they will be able to do more for less.
"Last year's project to this year's project is not apples to apples," said Sean Young, a spokesman for Hershey Medical Center. "The cost per square foot is going to go down, so we're going to be able to do a little more in terms of the scope for a relatively lower cost than we would have a year ago."
Hershey expects to begin construction of the 252,000-square-foot, five-story children's hospital in February. It will be built adjacent to the medical center's main entrance and Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute. The children's hospital is expected to open in fall 2012.
The total price tag has increased by $9 million from the original $235 million because the project has grown. It now includes on-campus road improvements and an expansion of the original $12 million support-services building project. The support-services building will now cost $17 million.
The improving economy and falling materials costs are allowing Hershey to expand its original plans.
Site preparation will begin in the next few weeks. A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for Friday.
The new children's hospital will include pediatric surgical suites, private pediatric and adolescent patient rooms, outpatient clinics for children with cancer and a new pediatric radiology unit.
It also will include educational resource centers where families can learn about childhood illnesses and health and wellness. Hershey officials said the hospital's design is "child-friendly."
Hershey's current children's hospital/trauma center occupies the seventh floor of the medical center. Those facilities were originally designed for adult patients, and many of the patient rooms do not accommodate parents who want to stay overnight with their children. Other units have become cramped.
All of the new children's hospital's in-patient rooms will be private and include space for parents to spend the night with their children.
Plans call for five operating rooms designed for surgical care of children and adolescents, an eight-bed surgical recovery area, a cardiac catheterization lab for pediatric heart patients as well as significantly expanded space for pediatric intensive care, according to Hershey officials.
An outpatient pediatric cancer pavilion on the first floor will include 11 infusion rooms and eight exam rooms to support bone marrow transplantation and other therapies vital to treating children with cancer. An 18-bed inpatient unit for hematology/oncology patients will be on the third floor.
In addition to critical-care facilities, there are areas designed to provide children and families with distraction from their worries. These include a meditation room, an outdoor roof terrace and an interactive learning wall on the hospital's first floor.
The children's hospital will cost $206.5 million. The expansion of the nearby Centerview Parking garage and a new support-services building bring the total project cost to about $244 million, Young said. The garage expansion will provide 935 parking spaces through a four-level addition to the existing garage.
