Kootenai Medical Center plans to start work on a $4.7 million parking garage next month as part of a major parking expansion designed to alleviate overcrowding at its Coeur dAlene campus.


In addition, a surface parking lot expansion already is under way. Combined, the projects will add about 460 parking spaces by May 2005.


KMC currently has 930 parking spaces, which arent enough to serve the busy North Idaho hospital, says Don Soltman, KMCs vice president of support and ancillary services.


We need the parking space, says Soltman. Were really tight.


Leone & Keeble Inc., of Spokane, will build the new four-story, 390-space parking garage, which will be located on the southwest corner of KMCs property and will be accessible from Ironwood Drive. Northwest Architectural Co. PS, of Spokane, designed the free-standing structure.


In the surface-lot expansion, the hospital is adding about 70 parking spaces by removing an old heliport, just south of the hospitals emergency department. Polin & Young Construction Inc., of Coeur dAlene, is doing the work on that $237,000 project.


That project should be done in 30 days, Soltman says.


When the hospital built its new $9.6 million heart center addition, which it opened in June, it moved its heliport to the roof of the addition, Soltman says.


The hospital started work on a $3.4 million expansion of its emergency department and its laboratory last month.