The sound of wrenching steel and crumbling brick will be music to the ears of Mountain View residents who have waited years for a new neighbor. Today, Camino Medical Group (CMG) began demolition of the Emporium building, the old department store which has stood vacant for a decade. The landmark site will become the location of CMG's state-of-the-art, 250,000-square-foot, out-patient medical center.

The site is at 701 El Camino Real East at Highway 85, in Mountain View. The building demolition phase is expected to take six to seven weeks. A formal groundbreaking event is being planned for late April 2005.

"CMG has been providing high quality, personalized health care in the area for 50 years. With the opening of this new medical facility, we will provide coordinated care for this community for many years to come," said CMG's CEO Richard Slavin, M.D. "This $160-million project is an investment in the permanent provision of high-quality health care for our current and future patients and their families."

Dr. Slavin was joined by Mountain View Mayor Matt Neely, neighborhood representatives, and Eric Lamb of DPR Construction, the project's general contractor.

"We're very excited to be a part of this notable project and put lean construction techniques into practice to further develop metrics for enhancing value," said Eric Lamb, executive vice president of DPR Construction, Inc. "For example, on the Camino Medical Group project, we will be reusing all of the concrete from the demolished Emporium building onsite, which will save an anticipated $450,000 in transportation, material and landfill fee costs."

Approximately 25,000 tons of stone debris will be reused in this construction rather than land-filled.

Another new CMG effort launched this week is a Web site dedicated to providing a two-way flow of communications between CMG and the community. By visiting CMG's homepage (caminomedical.org) and following a link called "The New Mountain View Clinic," people can view building renderings, read about the project details, and even submits questions and comments. In the coming weeks, DPR will be activating a "Live Cam" at the construction site, so Web site visitors can view time-lapsed, photographic progress of the project.

A physician-directed health care provider, Camino Medical Group is dedicated to providing high quality health care to its nearly 200,000 Bay Area patients. Camino Medical Group has 15 sites with more than 200 primary care and specialist physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. It is a division of the not-for-profit Palo Alto Medical Foundation, which is a Sutter Health affiliate. Sutter Health is one of the nation's leading not-for-profit networks of hospitals, doctors, nurses and other health care services.