Kaweah Delta Medical Center is beginning construction this week on two new parking lots that will add nearly 80 patient and visitor parking spots to the campus by April.

Two buildings, both once used as fast food restaurants, will be demolished in order to increase patient and visitor parking near the hospital in downtown Visalia. Kaweah Delta purchased the restaurants in 2012 and 2013.

“As we work hard to modernize, expand and improve facilities, our parking spaces are at a premium,” said Gary Herbst, CEO of Kaweah Delta. “This is just one of the solutions that will help patients and visitors find parking closer to our medical center.”

Construction on the parking lots will take place along Acequia Avenue from West to Floral streets. One parking lot on the corner of Acequia and West will be for physicians, while the lot closest to the medical center on the corner of Acequia and Floral will be a 27-space lot for visitors and patients. An additional 26 additional patient and visitor spots will open just west of the Acequia Wing with the completion of the physicians’ lot.

Additionally in April, construction on the fifth and sixth floors of the Acequia Wing are expected to be completed, opening up the remaining 30 patient and visitor parking spots in the lot west of the Medical Center’s Acequia Wing. Currently, those spots are in use by construction equipment as Kaweah Delta increases the medical center’s inpatient bed capacity with the addition of a 24-bed Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) that will offer patients private rooms. The fifth and sixth floors were left unfinished when the Acequia Wing was completed 2009 to provide for the flexibility of future expansion.