Officials break ground on hospital to replace Landstuhl - News - Stripes: After more than a year of delays, American and German officials heaved the first shovels of dirt Friday to mark the symbolic start of construction on a nearly billion-dollar U.S. military hospital here.
Expected to open in 2022, the new facility will replace the Army’s aging Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and the Air Force’s medical clinic at Ramstein Air Base, both of which were built in the 1950s and cost millions of dollars a year to maintain.
Work at the new hospital site began in earnest in February after the U.S. military and its German counterparts laid out plans to mitigate the project’s environmental impact, allaying the concerns of environmental groups whose lawsuits had stalled the project.
Since finishing tree cutting in February, workers have begun demolishing unused buildings, including a railhead, warehouses and dozens of bunkers that once housed ammunition.
The United States spent some $16 million planting trees, relocating animals and building habitats and breeding grounds for other creatures to mitigate environmental damage.
“The heavy construction, which is really the movement of the earth and shaping of the earth, will be beginning later this fall or early in the new calendar year,” said Lloyd Caldwell, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ director of military programs.
That early work entails laying utility lines for the new facility. The construction of the hospital and companion buildings will start sometime in the next couple of years, Caldwell said.
