New Lockport Memorial Hospital ready to serve

Thomas Tedesco, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, N.Y.
·2 min read

Oct. 4—After nearly three years of planning and construction, the sun was shining on the new Lockport Memorial Hospital.

On an unseasonably warm Wednesday afternoon, representatives of Catholic Health, the Diocese of Buffalo, Niagara County and hospital employees were on hand for a ribbon cutting and blessing of the hospital at 6001 Shimer Drive, on acreage that previously was a part of Hall's Apple Farm.

Those who had also attended the groundbreaking ceremony in November 2021 recalled that rain-soaked day and the years of work that lay ahead.

"We were literally up to our ankles in mud," Monsignor Robert Zapfel, a Catholic Health board member, recalled. "The podium started to sink into the ground."

"We stood before you to announce our plans to build a new neighborhood hospital in Lockport," Catholic Health president and CEO Joyce Markiewicz added. "We didn't have the architectural plans, the financing, the approvals that we needed, or even the land that would be built, but we had a vision."

That vision is now realized and Lockport Memorial Hospital, a campus of Mount St. Mary's Hospital, is ready to take in patients when it opens at 8 a.m. next Tuesday.

The 60,000 square-foot facility houses an 18-bed full-service Emergency Department, a 10-bed inpatient unit with room to increase to 20 bed, diagnostic imaging and laboratory services, and medical offices where primary care, women's health and specialty care services will be offered. The medical offices are slated to open by the end of the month.

The goal of the new hospital is to provide sufficient and more accessible health care to residents of eastern Niagara County, according to Mount St. Mary's president CJ Urlaub.

Noting "it takes over an hour to go from Lewiston to Somerset," he said, "There are some of the worst health measures of our population, of our community here in all of New York State. That's not something to be proud of and we deserve better. We deserve a hospital that will serve our county."

The temporary Lockport Emergency Room at 5875 S. Transit Road, which has been serving the community since the mid-June closure of Eastern Niagara Hospital, will close at 8 a.m. Tuesday, coinciding with the opening of the Emergency Department at LMH.