Hospital construction reaches milestone; little said on jobs

A steel beam peppered with signatures and the handprints of Raj and Indu Soin’s young grandchildren was hoisted Monday atop the Soin Medical Center’s steel frame. Accompanying the beam was a Norway spruce and the U.S. flag, marking completion of the $135 million facility’s skeleton.

But plans for divvying up jobs between the six-story hospital under construction at 3535 Pentagon Blvd. and the existing Greene Memorial Hospital in Xenia remain far from complete, hospital officials said. They declined to provide many details on jobs Monday, saying only the entire Mills-Morgan Medical Campus in Beavercreek, where the Soin Medical Center is under construction, will have about 1,000 employees. Greg Henderson, president of both hospitals, expects job numbers to be firm in a year. Soin Medical Center is on pace to open in early 2012.