OTHELLO — For years, Othello Emergency Medical Services administrators saved money for a new ambulance hall, and on Monday EMS and Othello Community Hospital officials broke ground on the new facility.

Jim Lomax, EMS coordinator, paid tribute to the EMS crew.

“My wonderful staff, who have supported me so well for so long and made me look good,” Lomax said as he introduced them. “They do an awesome job under the worst circumstances, and they all deserve this wonderful place.”

The project budget is $4.2 million, Lomax said. For that money, OCH and the EMS crew will get a significantly bigger ambulance hall.

“We’ll have five sleep rooms instead of the three we have now,” Lomax said. “And we’ll have enough garage bays for all of our ambulances, plus one.”

Currently, the district has three ambulances, one of which must be stored outside, said OCH board member Bob Carlson.

“And we’ll have garage doors and bays that are large enough to accommodate today’s larger ambulances,” Lomax said.

“And high enough to accommodate a four-wheel drive,” Carlson said. “That’s one thing I wanted to add to the list, is a four-wheel drive (ambulance).”

Some landscaping and part of a driveway will have to be removed to accommodate the new facility. It will be located just off 14th Avenue in front of the hospital. The contract calls for completion by April 2024, Lomax said.

The district passed its first EMS levy in 2011.

“We’ve been saving since then, little by little,” Carlson said.

As a result, the project has been a while in the making.

“We’ve been kicking the budget item down the road for quite some time,” Lomax said.

“It’s been on the budget for years,” Carlson said.

The time put into saving money has, in the end, paid off.

“We finally had enough money in savings where we can pay for part of it,” Carlson said. “The need is there – there’s a huge need.”

Inflation has affected construction projects nationwide, and the ambulance hall project is no exception. Hospital board members voted to use some of the district’s funds to bridge the gap, which will be paid back by the EMS district.

“We approved a larger project than what we had funds for,” Carlson said. “So we’ll have to borrow some money from another fund.”

“And then repay it out of future levy earnings,” Lomax said.

“We’re gradually getting more money to pay it back,” Carlson said.

“I think one of the important points is that the project will be entirely paid for out of the EMS levy,” Lomax said.

“That’s correct. It doesn’t come out of the hospital budget,” Carlson said.

The first phase of the project will be a new home for the mobile MRI equipment that regularly visits OCH. The mobile MRI will be parked on a new pad at the south end of the hospital, nearer the radiology department, Lomax said.

“When they built the new addition to the hospital, that’s where they planned for it to be. But they never completed that,” he said.

Completion of that phase is tentatively scheduled for late May.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].