State officials pause plans for COVID-19 overflow center in Madison

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State officials are hitting pause on a plan to convert Madison’s Alliant Energy Center into a site for the treatment of patients with mild cases of coronaviurus patients.

The project had originally been proposed as a way to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. But Wisconsin Department of Health Services Deputy Secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk said during a media briefing Tuesday that state officials aren’t moving forward with the development of a so-called Alternative Care Facility at the convention center as initially planned.

That announcement comes less than a week after U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a number of contractors completed the construction of a similar Alternative Care Facility, one with 500 beds,  at State Fair Park in West Allis.

Gov. Tony Evers submitted an application for the proposed center in Madison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in mid-April. Willems Van Dijk said officials have been working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the designs for the proposed center are finished. And even though construction has been placed on hold, it could be re-started if the state’s outbreak worsens, she said. By Monday, Dane County had 414 confirmed cases of the virus and 21 deaths.

“We don’t see an imminent need for the facility,” Willems Van Dijk said. “But if things change, we could re-institute those plans.”

State officials had initially planned to enlist the Army Corps for the project, according to an announcement from Gov. Tony Evers on April 12. Evers didn’t stipulate when the center would have to be finished, how big it would need to be or how much it would cost.

It typically takes the Corps a couple of weeks to complete such projects. For the center in West Allis, for instance, more than 200 union tradespeople worked in two shifts to complete the project in less than two weeks. The general contractor on the project was Gilbane, which was joined by a long list of subcontractors, including Staff Electric and J. F. Ahern and others. Separately, the Army Corps has turned McCormick Place in Chicago into a care center for COVID-19 patients.

So far, the treatment center in West Allis isn’t taking in patients. Evers, in an executive order, required that the center be used only when health care centers that have added beds for COVID-19 patients have reached 80% capacity. Follow @natebeck9