At a ceremony celebrating the completion of the exterior of Orange County’s only cancer specialty hospital, it wasn’t the usual group of local dignitaries receiving all the accolades.
Rather, the dozens of people gathered at Irvine’s FivePoint campus on Wednesday, Sept. 6, all stood to applaud the group of construction workers clad in red hard hats and neon yellow vests.
Wednesday’s event was the “topping off” ceremony for the City of Hope Orange County’s 160,000 square foot, 73-bed cancer hospital, set to open in 2025. Topping off ceremonies are a longstanding tradition in the construction industry to commemorate the final structural beam being raised into place as well as a chance for the “suits” to honor and thank the “boots” on the ground.
With Andra Day’s “Rise Up” playing in the background, the audience, ranging from local elected officials and representatives from architecture and construction firms to healthcare workers in scrubs, cheered as the colossal, yellow tower crane picked up and placed that final beam.
The beam was filled with hundreds of signatures from construction workers, physicians, staff and elected officials.
“We always get so much credit for surgeries or our scientific skills, but the construction workers bring gifts to this community, too,” said Annette Walker, president of City of Hope Orange County.
Many of the 200 construction workers on site building the hospital are local to Orange County, Walker said.
City of Hope, she said, is excited to be able to provide more services in the area in tandem with its adjacent outpatient cancer center, which welcomed its first patients in August 2022.
The outpatient center has so far served thousands of patients, Walker said, many of whom had to travel a long way to City of Hope’s Duarte campus to receive treatment. The new hospital, right next to that outpatient center, will be City of Hope’s second comprehensive cancer center in…
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