A stroll or drive by the construction site of the new blood bank facility at 1215 Airport Heights Drive will present the observer with quite a view of what is to come when the building is finished. The new blood center, at 57,000 square feet, will be a tremendous improvement over current facilities, largely because all current operations will be consolidated at the new location.
It is not commonly known that the Blood Bank of Alaska, the state's only blood gathering and processing nonprofit organization, operates from four separate sites in Anchorage. Everyone is familiar with the main facility at 4000 Laurel Street, but there are three separate leased locations, as well; one for the blood mobiles and records storage, one for our cellular therapy operations, and one for marketing and administrative office space. The Laurel Street location has long since been outgrown, and makeshift office space can be found in the second floor hallway there. In addition to relieving the physical space challenges we have endured, consolidation will afford us cash savings of $250,000 per year in eliminated lease costs.
When the Laurel Street facility opened in 1981, it was planned to accommodate needs for 25 years. That was prior to serious FDA regulation of the national blood supply, and the emergence of the AIDS epidemic. The Laurel Street facility was at capacity within four years. Space management has been a challenge ever since.
While the size of the new facility is impressive, consolidation justifies most of the new space. The rest is to accommodate planned growth in operations and mandatory essential facility engineering standards. FDA regulations, too, dictate space requirements and workflow patterns to ensure the safety and security of blood being processed.
The Laurel Street facility, together with three leased locations, currently occupies 25,000 square feet. In our current facility layout, we have two dedicated laboratories. In the new building, we will have eight labs, all intended to provide for existing and new revenue-producing activities, including a hematology reference laboratory. Alaska is the only state in the country without a dedicated blood bank hematology reference laboratory. This function will not only serve our client hospitals, but also will benefit the medical programs at UAA.
Another new activity we anticipate will be the banking of mothers' milk. Local demand from hospital neonatal intensive care units is rarely satisfied by out-of-state providers, so an opportunity exists for the BBA to step in and meet that demand.
From the new building's inception, blood bank executives, the board of directors, our consultants, designers and construction managers have worked with austerity and diligence to develop a facility that provides for the seamless delivery of traditional products and services, allows for the development of new services, and very importantly, provides for realistic growth. We never again want to be caught as we were in the '80s, outgrowing a facility decades before anticipated.
Robert C. Petersen is president and CEO of the Petersen Group and is chairman of the board of the Blood Bank of Alaska.
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