After construction for more than four years, the surgical building on the UNC Hospitals campus in Chapel Hill has set its opening date.

The UNC Health system sent out a save-the-date message to some of its partners on Wednesday, saying the new hospital facility will hold an opening celebration with facility tours the morning of Friday, April 19. The event will be invite-only and not open to the public.

The North Carolina Surgical Hospital, which UNC constructed at 101 Manning Drive in front of the North Carolina Memorial Hospital, is a seven-story facility that broke ground in May 2019. Built on two former parking lots on the hospital campus, the building will be the largest single building on the UNC Medical Center campus at more than 377,000 square feet. Surgical operations will relocate from the Memorial Hospital building — which first opened in 1952 — into 26 rooms almost double the size of the hospital’s older spaces, and will add an 80-bed intensive care unit, a 15-bed observation unit, and dozens of pre- and post-op patient care areas.

Through the construction, the sights of tall cranes and traffic delays along Manning Drive have been common as crews installed the beams and built new pedestrian bridges. One bridge leads from the North Carolina Surgical Hospital to the Cardinal Parking Deck and another was built from the neighboring UNC Dental School to the parking decks. The new building held an official “topping out” ceremony to signify its last beam being installed in January 2022.

The ceremony on April 19 will begin in the 10 a.m. hour with remarks from UNC Health leaders, before visitors will receive facility tours of the surgical hospital. The facility is expected to begin receiving patients and performing surgeries in May, according to UNC Health.

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