LA CROSSE, WI-Construction has begun on the 400,000-square-foot new building at Gundersen Lutheran Health System here. Kraus-Anderson has finished a new 600-car parking ramp at the complex, and has begun work on the six-story facility, which will become the entrance and new patient bed building.

The project will be built in phases during the next four to eight years, to replace parts of the hospital, which saw its first building here in 1917. When fully complete, the six-story hospital will include private rooms for all patients to enhance comfort for patients and families, new operating rooms and expanded pre- and post-op areas allowing for better patient privacy and service, improved medical, surgical and critical care units, centralized services for women and children and a comprehensive trauma and emergency center with adjoining imaging services.

The hospital will be built to meet LEED standards, but that’s not the only green effort by Gundersen Lutheran. The health care firm hired Juhl Wind Inc. of Woodstock, MN to build a $10 million wind farm, a 5MW-sized wind-turbine electrical energy generation facility. The project should be finished next year.

Kraus-Anderson has both been active in La Crosse, developing and owning Shelby Mall and the US Bank building, and also is an active health care developer, completing more than 4.7 million square feet of healthcare facilities in the past five years. A KA spokesman tells GlobeSt.com that the firm is seeing more small and large construction projects for hospitals than in past years.

“We’ve been fortunate in Wisconsin and Minneapolis, where we completed the $275 million Amplatz project, the University of Minneapolis’ children’s hospital, and the $179 million Regions Hospital expansion in St. Paul,” the spokesman says. “We’re seeing continued investment in health care, from our perspective it’s still the strongest market, along with government facilities.”