MORGANTOWN – WVU Eye Institute staff and WVU Medicine leaders gathering in Monday morning’s wintry cold to watch the final steel beam lowered into place on the institute’s new building.
WVU broke ground on the new building on the corner of Elmer Prince Drive and Van Voorhis Road in January. The topping-out ceremony took place in the parking lot of United Bank.
A yellow crane lowered the white beam – bearing a WVU Eye Institute banner and topped with a tiny tree – into place.
Vision was a common theme among those who spoke.
Thomas Mauger, executive chair of WVU Eye Institute, thanked the leadership for their vigilance, vision and persistence to get the project off the ground, along with the donors who’ve helped the project move forward.
“The Eye Institute is more than a building,” he said. “It’s also the people in the building and the things that they do.” There’s a shortage of eye professionals in the state. “This building is going to help us meet that challenge.”
Mauger quoted Helen Keller: “The only thing that is worse than being blind is having sight, but without vision. I think building is proof that WVU has vision.”
Michael Grace president and CEO of WVU Hospitals, said he’s been on the job for four years. And within his first six months, he sat down with Mauger and heard his vision.
“I said, ‘We’re going to do that.’ It’s a blessing to be able to move this project forward and to see this beam go up.”
WVU Health System President and CEO Albert Wright said, “This is really a milestone, where we hang the last piece of steel in this building. … I’ve had this in my mind’s eye for a number of years. So to see this building come up … is very gratifying for me personally.”
The health system has a two-part mission, he said: to improve the health trajectory of the state and surrounding region, and to carry out the teaching mission of WVU. “And the Eye Institute and what we’re doing here is going to satisfy that two-part mission quite nicely.”
The current Eye Institute, next to the Physician Office Center, has 60 exam rooms and 13 testing rooms. The new 150,000-square-foot building will have 102 exam rooms and 44 testing rooms plus surgical suites. Mauger told The Dominion Post on Monday that the institute employs about 125at its current site; that will double in the new building.
The four-story institute will be connected by a two-level bridge to a new, dedicated multi-level parking garage for patients and staff, with more than 1,100 spaces.
The building is expected to open mid-2027. That will allow the current institute building to come to make room for the planned Hazel Ruby McQuain Comprehensive Cancer Hospital.
