From April 26 to May 1, there will be closures on 29^th Street and on Capitol Avenue. Following are details:

29th Street Closure

In order to complete work on the new bridge connecting the South Parking Lot to the Anderson Lucchetti Women’s and Children’s Center, 29^th Street between L Street and Capitol Avenue will be closed from 7 p.m. Friday to 7 p.m. Saturday.

Capitol Avenue Lane Closures

To facilitate utility work in the street, Capitol Avenue between 28^th and 29^th streets will have lane closures from Monday, April 29, through Wednesday, May 1. The barriers will begin mid-block so there will be access to the Biba restaurant valet. Here are details for each day:

• The westbound lane and one eastbound lane will be closed from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, April 29.
• On Tuesday, April 30, and Wednesday, May 1, the westbound lane will be closed from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. on both days.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to construct “the medical campus of the future” in midtown Sacramento.

A construction worker, left, puts final touches on the bridge spanning 28th Street.

New Span Over 28th Street to Open Friday, and 29th Street Bridge to Be Installed This Weekend

An integral aspect in the Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento midtown expansion’s goal to provide all patient services under one roof will move two steps closer after this weekend.

Construction workers admire the new 28th Street bridge, which has views of the Old Tavern, Sutter’s Fort and the expanded Sutter Medical Center campus.

One bridge is expected to be opened Friday, March 15, and another will be put in place by Monday, March 18, with only one bridge yet to be built. In all, six bridges – including the three-story spanning structure over L Street – will connect the entire campus, which is also connected by a series of tunnels at the basement level.

The bridge over 28^th Street connecting the second floors of the Buhler Building/Sutter Cancer Center and the Sutter Capitol Pavilion outpatient services center and specialty physician office building is slated to open for public and staff use Friday morning.

The access point to the bridge at the Buhler Building is next to the women’s restroom on the second floor. At Capitol Pavilion, the bridge entrance is right off the second-floor elevators near Outpatient Surgery. The bridge is an entirely enclosed and conditioned space, and has glass walls that provide views of the Old Tavern, Sutter’s Fort and the campus. The 28^th Street bridge hours will be 6 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays and locked on nights and weekends.

On Saturday, an open-air, covered bridge that was built off-site will be put in place at the corner of 29^th and L streets. The bridge connects the second level of the South Parking Lot to the second floor of the Anderson Lucchetti Women’s and Children’s Center. The parking lot is set to become patient, visitor and physician parking when the acute-care facility opens in 2014.

The installation of the bridge will require 29^th Street to be closed between L Street and Capitol Avenue from Friday night until Monday morning. The bridge will make a dramatic entrance to the site early Saturday morning by traveling from its South Sacramento birthplace up Interstate 5, and then east on J Street to 29^th Street. The bridge, which will include an elevator and stairway at the parking lot, is scheduled to be completed in June.

The other existing bridges connect Sutter General Hospital to the Buhler Building and to the Fort Sutter medical office building. The last remaining bridge will be the one connecting the Women’s and Children’s Center and the Buhler Building. That bridge is scheduled to be built later this year.

The 29th Street bridge is ready to be installed.

SACRAMENTO — It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s not: A pedestrian bridge will be crawling up J Street early Saturday morning.

The 80-foot-long bridge will be making its way to its final destination at the corner of 29^th and L streets and will link the new Anderson Lucchetti Women’s and Children Center to parking lot for visitors and physicians– one of a series of spans that will connect all of Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento’s comprehensive services on one midtown campus.

The open-air, covered bridge, which was designed by Lionakis, was built off-site in order to minimize traffic interruptions at Sutter Medical Center’s midtown campus, which includes the construction of the Women’s and Children’s Center and a major renovation of Sutter General Hospital. The plan to construct the bridge at another location allowed 29th Street to be closed only on weekends.

The bridge was built at Viking Steel on Elder Creek Road and will be loaded onto a truck and brought up Interstate 5 to J Street. From there, it will turn right onto 29^th Street to the corner of L Street. Transporting the bridge will begin at 4 a.m. Saturday and will take up to two hours.

29th Street will be closed beginning at 7 p.m. Friday until 5 a.m. Monday to allow crews to attach the bridge to both sides. Once the span is on the site, a crane will lift the 66,000-pound bridge into place and workers will work on Saturday and Sunday to ensure that it is properly secured.

When fully completed this summer, the bridge on the parking lot side will include an elevator and stairs designed to look like a treehouse, Lionakis officials said.

“The bridge design is intended as a metaphor to reference the iconic Sacramento tree canopy that engulfs many of the streets throughout the city,” said Mike Davey, an associate with Lionakis. “The ‘treehouse’ that contains the elevator and stairs is designed to provide a playful relief for the patients and caregivers of the medical facility, especially the children.”

When the expanded Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento campus opens in 2014, there will be six spans connecting all of Sutter Medical Center’s services under one roof. Besides the 29^th Street bridge, the spans are:

• The three-story spanning structure over L Street that will seamlessly connect the Women’s and Children’s Center and Sutter General Hospital, which will be renamed the Ose Adams Medical Pavilion.
• A bridge over 28^th Street that connects the Sutter Cancer Center with Sutter Capitol Pavilion, a specialty physicians medical office building and outpatient services center that opened in 2010. This bridge completed construction just this week.
• A bridge connecting the Sutter Cancer Center, which will be renamed the Buhler Specialty Pavilion, and the Women’s and Children’s Center.
• The existing bridges that connect the Sutter Cancer Center and Sutter General Hospital, and the other that links Sutter General to the Fort Sutter medical office building.

For more information on the expansion project, including artist renditions and photos, go to www.suttermedicalcenter.org/expansion.

If you are a patient with an upcoming appointment at the Sutter Cancer Center/Buhler Building and would like to request alternative drop-off accommodations, please contact your physician’s office.  The L Street construction that impacts our valet service will be completed this summer.

For questions/concerns regarding our construction, please call (916) 454-7528.  

The new locker rooms in Sutter General Hospital contain 720 lockers.

The new locker rooms and lounge are expected to open at the end of January.

The locker rooms and lounge that the Sutter General surgery staffs currently use are located on the third floor next to the existing operating rooms. With the move-in of the Sutter Heart & Vascular Institute and the Sutter Children’s Center into the midtown campus in 2014, the third-floor surgical services are expanding from 12 operating rooms to a total of 26 surgical suites and heart catheterization labs. With the expansion of these services, there wasn’t room on the third floor for a larger lounge and additional lockers to accommodate both surgical staffs from Sutter General and Sutter Memorial hospitals. So, the locker rooms and lounge will now be located directly underneath the surgery department, and staff will change into their scrubs on the second floor and walk up a dedicated staircase to the third floor.

In total, the men’s and women’s locker rooms contain 720 lockers, and both are equipped with spacious lavatories that include showers. The 1,200-square-foot lounge includes a kitchen with a refrigerator, ice machine, four microwaves, a sink and plenty of storage area for kitchen supplies. The lounge has enough chairs for at least 70 employees to eat lunch, relax or work on computers, and includes a long work station overlooking Sutter’s Fort that can accommodate more than a dozen staffers.

The staircase construction is still under construction, but it is anticipated that staff will begin using the new locker rooms and lounge by the end of January to make room for the new surgical suites to be constructed on the third floor.

The Quiet Space is located on the second floor next to the space being prepared for the upcoming Au Bon Pain café.

Here are the blessings offered by Sutter employees representing several faiths:

Winty Singh, Senior Planning Analyst, Sikh: “May this be a place of connection, to the Light within ourselves and to each other, in the spirit of healing and rejuvenation.”

Marion Leff, M.D., Director of Family Practice Residency, Jewish: “May this be a place of r’fuah shlemah, a complete healing, healing of the soul and healing of the body.”

Jackie Valdez, Case Manager, Roman Catholic: “May this be a place where you will experience the healing love of Christ our divine physician and healer.”

Katie Tenerelli, Social Services Clinical Supervisor, Protestant: “May this be a place of communing with the Holy.”

Muhammad Afzal, M.D., Pulmonary Physician, Muslim: “May this be a place of peace and quiet.”

Barbara West, Wound & Ostomy Nurse, Buddhist: “May this be a place to recognize our basic goodness.”

Gary Zavoral, Public Relations Specialist, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “May this be a place where everyone can feel God’s love and comfort while His hands help guide the care of our loved ones.”

Prem Chahaun, Environmental Services, Hindu: “May this be a place to share warmth and happiness for those in need, a place to share love, peace and harmony to our fellow man.”

Raymond Kozuma, SMCS Patient, Oncology Services: “May this be a place of joy and celebration.”

Phil Goldvarg, Family Member, Native American: “May this be a place of gathering of all relatives.”