For the Sake of Progress ⎯ The Relocation of the Medical Center’s Dropoff and Turnaround
The featured image is an overhead view of the main entrance drop-off and turnaround locations for the existing Medical Center and Children’s Hospital. The image in the lower left is of the location as it was before it was relocated to the area as depicted in the night photo in the upper left.
On Saturday night, September 28, 2019, sometime around 9:00 PM, it all began on Prospect Ave. near the main entrance to the Medical Center. At first, there were two or three hardhats, another one, then there were four walking down the sidewalk, and more came from around a shed in the north yard. Some carried lunch pails, some carried a cup of coffee, and others carried the tools of their trade. All was quiet in the darkness around the entrance to the Medical Center. There were no vehicles: The last had departed a few minutes earlier. Back on Prospect Avenue, halfway down the street, plastic K-rails were being positioned to prevent traffic from entering the area. Suddenly, portable generators came to life, and lights began to illuminate the area casting weird shadows around some of the equipment. Some of the shadows danced around on the Schuman Pavilion Pedestrian Bridge above. As if compelled by an unseen director, some of the hardhats, having put down their lunch pails, dispersed in various directions only to disappear behind a shed or a piece of machinery and then reemerge under the lights with wheelbarrows full of equipment of kinds, A couple of forklifts rumbled and bounced down the drive. At the turnaround at the main entrance, a couple of tradesmen were carefully removing the vertical lights so that they could re-install them at the new location. And so the allnighter began, and the following photos will hopefully depict the action on the turnaround.
After graduate school Dennis accepted a position at Loma Linda University. He worked there for 42 years in the areas of administration and financial management, also teaching accounting and management to dietetic students at the School of Public Health. Through the years Dennis has chronicled the growth of the campus, including the construction of the Drayson Center and the Centennial Complex and the razing of Gentry Gym. He is the author of "The Mound City Chronicles: A Pictorial History of Loma Linda University, A Health Sciences Institution 1905 - 2005." dEp 09.30.2016 🔨