Hospital, Medical School Announce Large Donations

Saddleback Memorial Medical Center officials broke ground in Laguna Hills on Wednesday for a new emergency center and announced an additional donation of $10 million for its construction.

Nolan Draney, president of Saddleback Memorial Foundation, said the contribution came from William and Louise Meiklejohn of Laguna Woods. The new center will be named the Meiklejohn Critical Care Pavilion in honor of the couple.

“It’s an unusual gift for a not-for-profit hospital,” Draney said. “You just don’t find hospitals that don’t engage in research getting this kind of money.”

The Meiklejohns’ latest contribution brings the total raised for the new emergency center to $26.4 million, Draney said. The couple have contributed $22 million to the foundation in the past 10 years, he said.

When plans for the two-story, 53,480-square-foot center were announced about three years ago, construction costs were estimated at $15 million. Hospital officials now say it will cost about $20 million to complete the structure.

Saddleback Memorial was designed to handle 1,500 emergency cases each month but now takes in about 2,100 cases and handles 500 paramedic calls monthly.

Hospital officials said the new emergency center will help them handle the additional caseload more efficiently. The hospital serves most of south Orange County, where the population has grown significantly in the past five years.

On Wednesday, UC Irvine also announced a $5-million donation from George Hewitt that will go toward the construction of a third building at UCI’s Biomedical Research Center. The building will be named in honor of Hewitt and his late wife, Dottie, who died in December. Hewitt is a former engineer and member of the Beckman Laser Institute board of directors at UCI.

Hewitt established the George E. Hewitt Foundation for Medical Research, which has also awarded 40 post-doctoral fellowships nationwide.

His donation is the third large contribution received by UCI since January. The school’s College of Medicine received $5.7 million in January from the Samueli family for research in alternative medical treatments. Last month, the Chao family gave $8.1 million to Sprague Hall, the second building at UCI’s Biomedical Research Center, for cancer genetics research.

Dr. Thomas Cesario, dean of the College of Medicine, said the contributions will enable UCI to maintain its international reputation as a top-flight medical school.

“The funds were needed,” Cesario said. “We’re chronically short of space. . . . It’s critical to our growth and establishing ourselves as an outstanding medical school.”

The facilities will take about two years to complete, but Michael Selsted, professor in pathology, said he doesn’t mind waiting that long. Selsted said he’s already waited 10 years.

“My labs are held in temporary buildings that are 30 years old,” Selsted said. “The lab space is reasonable, but it’s very old. The campus cannot possibly expand research without new space--and state-of-the-art space.”

Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this report.