After decades serving the families of young patients at Charleston Area Medical Center's Women and Children's Hospital from Kanawha City, the Ronald McDonald House of Charleston will break ground today on its new, more conveniently located facility.
Dewayne Dickens, executive director of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Southern West Virginia, said the new $3.5 million structure will be located on Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Charleston, next to the West Virginia Lottery Building and within walking distance of Women and Children's Hospital.
The building is set to replace Charleston's current Ronald McDonald House, the smallest and oldest of the three in West Virginia.
"Our mission, of course, is to have those families together, so when the opportunity came about to purchase the property to be able to relocate our house within 200 to 300 steps from the hospital, that was a chance for us to bring the children, the parents and the families closer together," Dickens said.
The Ronald McDonald House Charities already has raised $3.1 million of its goal through its Building Love, Bridging Hearts fundraising campaign lunched in December 2014. The new house, led by the design/build team from Pray Construction and Williamson-Shriver Architects, will be located on the site of the current hospital staff parking lot on Pennsylvania Avenue. Construction will begin in October and is expected to be completed by the fall of 2016.
The house will be 19,000 square feet with 14 guest rooms - four more than in the previous house - and will have a third-floor shell for storage and future expansion. Dickens said the building will also have an expanded common area and will be fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
"In thirty years, this is our biggest accomplishment," Dickens said. "Those families can now go visit their children at any time, day or night - it's proven children heal faster with support from their families, and that was our most pressing reason for doing this. Our current house is 30 years old this year, and in 30 years, serving more than 8,000 families, there's a lot of wear and tear on this facility. This is going to bring us into a new, more modern, more efficient house for our families."
In 2014, the house served 2,147 people from 36 of West Virginia's 55 counties as well as 16 families from other states. It has served more than 8,000 families in the last 30 years, and the house provides and estimated $380,000 in direct aid to those who stay there each year.
The groundbreaking ceremony will be held at 10 a.m. today at the new house's planned location, 912 Pennsylvania Ave.
Major contributors to the project include BrickStreet Mutual Insurance Company, Charleston Area Medical Center, Columbia Pipeline Group and McDonald's of the Tri-State and Southern West Virginia. The Ronald McDonald House is still seeking donations to reach its $3.5 million goal. To learn more about individual or group donation opportunities, visit CharlestonRMHC.org or call 304-346-0279.
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.