ELLSWORTH – A local hospital is preparing to launch a $5.5 million fund-raising effort to help pay for a new wing it hopes to add to its facility, according to a hospital official.

The fund-raising effort likely will get under way officially within the next month, Don Baril, Maine Coast Memorial Hospital director of development, said last week.

“We’re really in the throes of the biggest expansion that the hospital has ever endeavored to take on,” Baril said. The last time the 46-year-old hospital pursued a building project was in 1989, he said.

The campaign will raise money for a new 25,000-square-foot wing at the hospital that will include new operating rooms, a new intensive-care unit and a new food service facility, Baril said. The wing will have four new operating rooms that will provide much-needed space for modern-day surgical equipment and will house a new, upgraded intensive-care unit that can accommodate up to seven patients, Baril said.

Also considered part of the hospital’s expansion is a new, $600,000 magnetic-resonance imaging facility, Baril said. The MRI center will open on Thursday, May 16, while the hospital will host a community open house in the new facility from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 18, he said.

The construction project also will include the renovation of 20,000 square feet of existing space, according to Baril. The hospital’s outpatient surgery, emergency medicine, maternity and reception areas will all be renovated or expanded, he said.

Baril said the hospital is in the initial phases of getting its campaign organized. Members of the hospital’s staff and board of trustees have already contributed to the overall $10.5 million project, $5 million of which will be appropriated through private means, Baril said.

“In a capital campaign, there’s a quiet phase where you get your ducks lined up,” Baril said. “Everybody’s got their money where their mouth is.”

Also considered to be part of the hospital’s overall expansion, though they will not be owned by the hospital, are two buildings that will house an orthopedics practice and the hospital’s primary-care services, according to hospital officials.

Frenchman Bay Orthopedics will occupy a 4,000-square-foot building on Union Street, while the hospital’s 10,300-square-foot primary care facility will be built on Resort Way, near the intersections of U.S. Route 1 and Route 3, they said.

Hospital officials said they hope to have all the new facilities completed by 2006.