Grant County commissioners give go-ahead for morgue planning

EPHRATA — Grant County commissioners have given verbal approval to move ahead with plans to build a new county morgue in the new Samaritan hospital.

Commissioners decided to continue with planning on the project during a meeting with Grant County Coroner Craig Morrison on Tuesday.

The current morgue is in the existing Samaritan Hospital, but a new hospital is in the planning stages.

During the June 25 hospital commission meeting, consultant Joe Kunkel told hospital commissioners that the goal is to start construction in spring 2021.

Morrison said ZGF, a Seattle architectural firm designing the new hospital, gave him three options for the morgue. The estimated cost is about $1,000 per square foot, Morrison said.

The first option for a new facility would be about 4,200 square feet. It would add a garage and a separate room for storing the coroner’s office files. Morrison said the coroner’s office has files and pieces of evidence dating back to 1959.

The second option, about 3,600 square feet, would eliminate the garage in favor of a loading dock. The third option, about 3,200 square feet, would eliminate the file storage room also.

Morrison said he would prefer the first option, with the garage. He has done investigations where friends, family or acquaintances of the deceased followed the coroner back to the morgue. The current morgue uses a loading dock, and there have been some emotional situations when a body was unloaded, he said.

Storage for records also is important, he said. Many of the morgue’s files can be digitized, but the evidence can’t, so it requires storage somewhere.

Commissioner Cindy Carter said she would support the first option, and commissioners Richard Stevens and Tom Taylor agreed. Taylor said it would be less costly to build now rather than try to expand later, and that the hospital might not have room for morgue expansion.

If commissioners opt for the morgue with a garage and storage, the project would cost an estimated $4.1 million to $4.2 million.

Hospital commissioners approved construction of a new hospital in 2019, but county officials discovered in January 2020 that the design didn’t include a morgue. County and hospital officials have been working since then to determine if the morgue could fit into the design and, if so, to come up with a proposed design.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.