High Street Tower dedicated, Med Center Health’s centennial celebrated
Published 2:20 pm Saturday, August 15, 2026
With fanfare befitting the celebration of a child’s birth, Med Center Health welcomed into the world its new High Street Tower, holding a dedication ceremony Saturday morning to commemorate the hospital’s new space for Women’s and Children’s Services.
(Joe Imel/Daily News)
With fanfare befitting the celebration of a child’s birth, Med Center Health welcomed into the world its new High Street Tower, holding a dedication ceremony Saturday morning to commemorate the hospital’s new space for Women’s and Children’s Services
The $119 million, five-story facility, under construction for the last two years, offers a more expansive space for newborns and mothers-to-be to receive care
Numerous hospital employees and local dignitaries were on hand for the ribbon-cutting, and a group of expectant mothers were the first to tour the facility after the ceremony
“I think when a patient walks into High Street Tower, what they’re going to see is that we designed this tower just for them,” said Kim Dethridge, Med Center Health’s director of women’s services. “This tower is expanding our capabilities…it’s so important to have everything under one roof in a building that is designed with the patients in mind.”
The top two floors feature rooms dedicated to labor and delivery, ante- and post-partum care, suites for caesarean services, an obstetrical emergency department and the region’s only Level III neonatal intensive care unit
Large windows in the labor/delivery and post-partum care rooms allow in a robust amount of natural light to encourage bonding between a mother and her newborn
Louisville firm Stengel Hill Architecture designed the tower and Kelley Construction, also based in Louisville, built the 180,000-square foot facility
Med Center Health is home to the state’s fourth-largest obstetrics program, delivering almost 3,000 babies a year, and the tower is designed with an eye toward growing along with the region’s population in the coming years
Med Center Health President and CEO Connie Smith said the next phase of the project calls for a surgery center, an expanded emergency department and spaces for a chapel and courtyard among other features
“This is a bold new chapter for Med Center Health and today most of all we celebrate what comes next – the first breath, first cries, first embraces and thousands of bright beginnings still to come,” Smith said
Dr. Ben Banasiewicz, chair of the hospital’s OB/GYN department, said the new facility will be a valuable regram offered in collaboration with the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Bowling Green, which had its first graduating class in 2023
“The residency creates an opportunity to develop physicians who understand this community and the needs of the patients we serve,” Banasiewicz said. “High Street Tower will become an important part of that learning environment. Residents and students will train in a modern setting, working side by side with physicians, nurses, midwifes, neonatal specialists and other members of the care team.”
Hospital officials also celebrated 100 years of community health care, with food trucks, games and live entertainment on hand near the High Street Tower
Med Center Health traces its origins back to what was known as City Hospital, which opened on Aug. 2, 1926, on Reservoir Hill, expanded in 1952 and 1967, moved to its current location in 1980 and expanded its reach since then by acquiring other facilities so that it now operates six hospitals in southcentral Kentucky
Smith said an estimated 150,000 babies have been born at City Hospital and Med Center Health in that timespan
Corie Martin, Med Center Health’s executive director for marketing and public relations, has enjoyed the research and conversations with retired employees in her efforts to document 100 years of service, dating back to accounts of rural families putting their loved ones on boats on Barren River to travel to the original hospital on Park Street
“There’s just a huge collaborative health care community here, so it’s been really fascinating to tell the story of people working together to open their homes in the beginning and make their homes hospitals, to the hospital being built and then expanded and then expanded again and then this hospital being built and this beautiful facility opening up,” said Martin
