EPHRATA — Grant County officials will keep working with Samaritan Healthcare officials on a plan to build a new county morgue at the new Samaritan hospital in Moses Lake. The new hospital is currently in the planning stages, with groundbreaking tentatively scheduled for spring 2021.

County commissioners gave verbal approval July 7 to a proposal to continue with the planning process.

The existing morgue is in the current Samaritan Hospital. Samaritan commissioners voted to build a new hospital in April 2019 and began design work during summer 2019, but adding a morgue to the design wasn’t discussed until January 2020.

Grant County Coroner Craig Morrison said he had discussed options with architects from ZGF, the company designing the new hospital. The estimated cost of construction would be about $1,000 per square foot, he said.

The first option is about 4,200 square feet and would include a garage and storage for coroner’s office files. The second and third options would eliminate the garage in favor of a loading dock.

The second option would be about 3,600 square feet, and would still include some room to store files. The third option, about 3,200 square feet, would eliminate the storage.

Morrison said he would prefer the first option because of the garage and file storage. In the past the coroner’s office has done investigations where family, friends or acquaintances of the victim followed the coroner back to the morgue. There have been some emotional situations when a body was unloaded at the current facility, which uses a loading dock, he said.

The coroner’s office has files and boxes of evidence back to 1959, he said. While some of the files could be digitized the evidence can’t, so storage would be required somewhere, he said.

All three commissioners said they would support the first option, which would cost about $4.1 to $4.2 million.