By CRAIG FREILICH

OGDENSBURG -- Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center is one of 350 hospitals in New York State that could benefit from an extension of a federal grant construction deadline.

In 2006 New York was awarded $2.5 billion for capital improvements at hospitals and health care facilities across New York State, with the stipulation that the projects needed to be completed by Sept. 30, 2011.

The new deadline is March 30, 2014.

"Due to bureaucratic red tape at the state and federal level, it took an unexpectedly long time to get the projects underway," a news release from U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's office said.

Claxton-Hepburn spokeswoman Laura Shea says the hospital’s $2.6 million project involves reconfiguring first-floor space at the medical center that had been a 28-bed nursing home that was closed.

She did say that approvals for the project had been long in coming.

The project at Claxton-Hepburn, a new “outpatient wellness center,” will consolidate some outpatient services space such as the blood-drawing lab area, an expanded sleep lab and occupational and speech therapy areas, and more room for the emergency department’s mental health observation area.

“It really will improve the efficiency of how we provide those services,” Shea said.

The work is expected to be done by June, certainly no later than the end of summer, Shea said.

"Many projects across the state were in danger of being stopped in their tracks, which meant major job losses, unless the deadline is extended," Sen. Gillibrand’s statement said.

The extension would not require additional federal funds, but would provide the state with authority to use the federal funds already committed under the waiver, the statement said.