Gift Kicks Off Hospital Campaign

By Kurt Helin
Editor

Construction continues at the Miller Children’s Hospital expansion, and now a capital campaign to support it is officially underway.

That effort got off to a fast start thanks to a $5 million gift from the Earl B. and Loraine H. Miller Foundation. The gift was announced Saturday at a kick-off celebration for the campaign supporting the hospital expansion. The campaign’s title is “Building for Children: Heroes Helping Heroes” and it is being organized by the Memorial Medial Center Foundation.

“We are grateful to the Earl B. and Loraine H. Miller Foundation,” said Terry Belmont, CEO of Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s Hospital.

The campaign became public last weekend, but it has quietly been going on for months. With the Miller Foundation gift, $18.4 million of the $24 million goal already has been raised.

However, that $24 million figure has to be reached by the end of this year to keep two matching grants — one from the Kresge Foundation (for $1.25 million) and the other from the Weingart Foundation, ($750,000).

In addition to all the private money raised, some money from voter-approved Proposition 61 will go to construction. That proposition, passed in 2004, was a $750 million statewide bond measure to help increase the number and size of children’s hospitals in the state.

Last Saturday’s event included a sand castle representation of the new pavilion, as well as tours of the construction.

That expansion is a four-story, 124,000-square-foot addition that will include a pediatric imaging center, the region’s only pediatric surgery center, additional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit beds, a resource center, gift shop and patient playroom.

Each of the floors in the expansion will have a different theme. For example, the first floor will have an “under the sea” theme while the top floor will have a “city” theme.

The expansion is next to the hospital’s current building on the Atlantic Avenue side of the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center/Miller Children’s Hospital campus. For details or to make a donation, call 933-1676.6