On September 8, elected officials, board members, community leaders, WellSpan physicians and team members, and neighbors of the hospital joined us in celebrating pulling down the first piece of South Hall.

After South Hall is demolished, the Marie Ketterman building will follow to make space for a new Surgical and Critical Care Tower. Both buildings stood on the campus for more than a half century. South Hall was originally constructed in 1970 and the Ketterman building was built in 1949.

The Surgical and Critical Care Tower that will be built in its place will enhance the services and high-quality care available to our community for generations into the future. 

As you can imagine, demolishing a building on an active hospital campus requires significant planning and techniques to minimize the impact on patient care.

The first phase of demolition on both buildings will take place inside the structures to remove materials and leave just the shell of the building. To take down the walls and roof of the building, special equipment will take "bites" out of it one section at a time (imagine "Pac-Man" chomping away at the bricks to knock them down).

Removing many of the interior materials will also reduce the amount of dust that will be created as the exterior of the building is knocked down. That allows the construction team to control the remaining dust being generated by spraying water over the site as the walls are knocked down.

You may have noticed that the skyway connector between South Hall and the Century Building was closed some time ago. As South Hall is demolished, the skyway will be too. The connector will be taken down between mid-October and mid-November. It will only take a few days to complete the skyway demolition, but the team member entrances beneath the skyway will be closed when it is being removed.

Afterwards, a new walkway will be created along the Century Building for team members to use to enter and leave from.

Throughout demolition and construction, a camera has been mounted to capture the entire process. Motion capture video can be pulled from the camera to show the progress of the project in an accelerated view.