Providence leaders said Wednesday the hospital plans to add an 85,000-square-foot building and remodel more than 100,000 square feet. The project is designed to improve the hospital's newborn intensive care and maternity units, as well as its cardiac surgery program.

"This project really got its start because of the needs of the tiniest Alaskans," said Richard Mandsager, chief executive at Providence.

There's an increased need for newborn intensive care in Alaska as more women in their 30s and 40s give birth, he said. The project will expand the hospital's newborn intensive care unit from 47 to 66 beds, as well as improve spaces for visiting families. The hospital also will add a second operating room for cardiac surgery

With a $150.3 million price tag, construction is expected to start in spring 2011 and end in late 2014.

"It's not unusual for Providence to have one of the bigger projects in the state," said Neal Fried, a state economist for the Alaska Department of Labor. "They've expanded so much in the past decade."

Fried said that two other large projects happening in the state are a $240 million prison at Point Mackenzie and a new hospital in Nome. Another large project is under way next door to Providence: the $46 million UAA Health Sciences Building, scheduled to open in fall 2011.

Many of the state's largest projects have been in the health care industry this past decade. Since 2000 the number of Alaskans employed in the health care sector has grown 46 percent, three times faster than overall employment, Fried said. Health care is also responsible for a quarter of all new jobs in the state since 2000.

"It's a monster job generator in Alaska, and right now it's one of the only ones," Fried said.

Providence, the largest private employer in the state, has led the charge, adding about 1,000 employees during the last 10 years. It's the only private company to employ more than 4,000 workers, Fried said.

Providence's expansion will create about 150 construction jobs a year, said Scott Goldsmith, an economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage's Institute of Social and Economic Research. Goldsmith estimates the expansion will indirectly generate about 100 jobs a year in the regional economy, for a total of about 250 jobs for each of the expansion's four years.

The project still needs approval from the Alaska Department of Health and Human Services. Click to view Providence's application filed with the health department.

Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com