WALLKILL – Site work has been going on at the East Main Street, Town of Wallkill site of the new Orange Regional Medical Center for weeks. Infrastructure is being put in place and one wall has been partially erected.

Hospital and community leaders Wednesday formally celebrated the start of work on the new $317 million healthcare facility that will replace the two existing campuses – Horton in Middletown and Arden Hill in Goshen.

Board Chairwoman Ginny Rizzo told the attendees the hospital will bring high-quality healthcare to thousands of families in the region.

“After eight years of planning, a vision for the hospital that would change the face of healthcare in our community has become a reality,” she said.

The effort is a “project of miracles,” hospital President Scott Batulis said.

“We faced this huge number of incredible challenges in the number of years we have been working on the project and as each challenge came up, we’d put our head down and work through it and persevere, and get it done, and then as soon as we were done with that challenge, a new challenge popped up,” he said.

As invited guests were marking the occasion under a large tent, several hundred union construction workers picketed along Crystal Run Road, protesting the lack of union labor on the job.

Batulis told MidHudsonNews.com that he understands their concerns but as a not-for-profit hospital, officials were not able to pay prevailing wages across the board, and therefore, had to go outside the unions for some aspects of the construction.

For their part, the union members argued that they live and work in the community and use the hospital in their time of need.