Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center expects this summer to start construction of a second-floor addition that will involve two portions of its main hospital building.

The addition is to include a total of 15,000 square feet of new floor space. The total dollar value of the project is estimated at $8 million to $9 million, says Bret Bowers, public affairs officer for Spokane VAMC.

Plans call for a 6,000-square-foot endoscopy and gastrointestinal unit to be constructed above the entrance on the east side of the main hospital building, at 4815 N. Assembly, and a 9,000-square-foot central processing addition to be built above the specialty-care and pharmacy addition on the west side of the building.

Contractor bids are due June 11. Only VA-certified service-disabled, veteran-owned contracting companies that have less than $33.5 million in average annual revenues will be considered for the project, says Charlene Duncan, a Walla Walla, Wash.-based contracting officer for Veterans Affairs.

Work is expected to be completed 19 months after the bid award, Duncan says.

The project also will include remodeling 1,200 square feet of space connecting the new construction with the existing structure and expanding the medical laboratory into a portion of the central processing addition, she says.

Central processing provides support functions, including supply distributing and collecting, cleaning, and sterilizing medical instruments, she says. Those functions will be moved to the addition from the eighth floor of the hospital building.

NAC|Architecture, of Spokane, designed the project.

Bowers says the endoscopy addition will include two procedure rooms in addition its current procedure space. Spokane VAMC doesn't anticipate that it will increase staff directly because of the additions, he says.

"Our most pressing priority is to make space to allow for increased care opportunities," Bowers says. "We anticipate more growth opportunities in the future as vets want more services."

Future plans likely will include expanding or renovating the hospital's operating room space on the eighth floor to take up some of the space the processing center will vacate there, he says.

The additions will follow other recent construction projects on the Spokane VAMC campus, including construction of a $6.5 million, 18,000-square-foot outpatient clinic that's nearly complete on the north side of the campus. Spokane VAMC opened its $5.5 million, 10,000-square-foot pharmacy in the fall of 2010, and earlier that year, it opened a $1 million-square-foot physical therapy building.