BREWER – Concept plans for Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems’ second building on Whiting Hill, including the new CancerCare of Maine Center and the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health, were unveiled Monday, and a $1.8 million earmark for the lab was announced.

“We’ve got great cause for celebration,” said Michelle Hood, president and CEO of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, at a press conference at the Cianchette Building, headquarters for EMHS.

U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud was in Brewer to tout the $1.8 million in federal money earmarked by Congress to support the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health, the second of two appropriations in recent years. The latest funding is part of the fiscal year 2007 federal budget. The first appropriation, which was for $2 million, was part of the Department of Defense spending bill for fiscal year 2006.

“I feel strongly about what the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health will do for this region,” said Michaud. “If you look at the collaboration with this project [and] the three institutes involved – that makes it more powerful.

“This is a project that’s very important for the region, the country … and the world,” he said.

The Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health is a partnership started two years ago between EMHS, the University of Maine in Orono, and The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor. The institute’s goal is to conduct research that addresses aging and chronically ill populations in rural Maine.

The partnership is one of many expected to form in the next decade, Janet Hock, the genetic institute’s director, announced at the conference.

“We’re hoping to make this a place where all the research centers in the state” come together to conduct studies, she said.

Jackson Lab senior scientist Clifford Rosen added that he is thrilled about working with other specialists.

“To bring the CancerCare and research vision to include everybody in the state – it’s very exciting,” Rosen said.

“Cancer affects a lot of people’s lives,” said Michaud, whose mother and aunt have been afflicted with the disease, after the press conference. “Everyone in Maine has a family member who has had cancer or knows someone with cancer.”

The concept designs for the second building show a $42 million CancerCare facility, on three floors, that will replace the current cancer treatment center at EMMC in Bangor, and the genetics lab on the fourth floor. It will be located between the current building and the driveway off Dirigo Drive. The building will be designed by Portland-based SMRT Inc. and built by construction management firm Barr & Barr Inc. of New York.

The genetics lab is expected to add another $12 million or so to the final price tag, according to early estimates.

“We’ll have a better estimate in about a month,” Ken Hewes, EMHS executive vice president, said after the announcement.

By making a home in Brewer, EMHS and its partners are changing and improving the community, Gail Kelly, deputy mayor for Brewer, said at the end of the gathering.

“They’re going to construct a state-of-the-art building that will probably stimulate shopping, eateries and more regional development,” she said. “It just snowballs.”

The groundbreaking for the second building is expected this spring, with a tentative opening in early 2009.