POCATELLO — Jeanette Hunt was not only a registered nurse at the old Portneuf Medical Center hospital building, now being razed after a long delay, she was also a candy-striper there while attending Pocatello High School. That was in 1966 and the hospital was just 16 years old.

Hunt is among many Pocatello residents watching this week as a demolition team resumes tearing down a place where countless memories and lifelong relationships manifested.

“It’s really a sad thing to see it go,” said Hunt, a registered nurse from 1996 through 2004 at what was once called the Bannock Regional Memorial Hospital. “There’s a lot of us that have some great memories of that place.”

Hunt said that she along with many of those who worked in the hospital would have loved to see it repurposed. As a child, Hunt’s father needed routine care in the hospital from a burn he received when he was younger.

Her father went on to spend two months in the hospital as they tried to diagnose his ailments.

“He was in the hospital at least twice a year growing up,” Hunt said. “My father passed away there and I’m sure that influenced my choice to become a nurse. So it is hard to see a place where so many memories were made being turned into a flat piece of land.”

As a female who does volunteer nursing in a hospital, or a candy-striper, Hunt spent much of her junior and senior years at the old hospital building. She spent additional time at the hospital in college as a student nurse while attending Idaho State University.

“There’s a lot of emotions that are part of being nurse and taking care of people,” Hunt said. “The friendships and the relationships that we made as nurses lasted years. I haven’t worked with some of these nurses for more than 25 years and we can pick up right where we left off.”

Other than family, Hunt said the relationships she developed with those nurses are her strongest lasting relationships today.

Throughout more than 50 years of use, rumors surfaced that the old hospital building was in some way haunted.

Though she didn’t deny those claims, Hunt said she never saw any paranormal activity.

“It was so busy when I was there that we wouldn’t have had room for a ghost,” Hunt said.

Haunted or not, the building, which once showcased the iconic Bannock Star will soon disappear — leaving only memories and an empty flat waiting for the next developer.

After the relocation of a cellphone tower delayed original demolition plans for nearly a year, the deconstruction of the old Portneuf Medical Center building next to Idaho State University resumed on Monday.

“We’re planning for about a month to get the building on the ground and about a month to get debris out of the way,” said Shannon Schultz, owner of Construction Services, the Pocatello company contracted to demolish the former hospital. “All the metals will be salvaged and the concrete will be taken to a pit, crushed down and made into gravel again. We’re trying to keep the debris going to the landfill down to a minimum.”

The old PMC hospital, built in 1950, was shut down in 2011 when the new Portneuf Medical Center opened on Hospital Way less than a mile to the northeast.

In February, the Portneuf Health Trust, owners of the old PMC, completed the relocation of a T-Mobile cellphone antenna from atop the former hospital to Idaho State University’s Garrison Hall. That allowed demolition to resume.

Schultz said the demolition team is currently using a high-reach excavator to finish the deconstruction of the old hospital.

“The high-reach that we are using is a somewhat of a rarity machine so there’s not very many of them in the area. It has a reach of about 80 feet,” Schultz said. “They are knocking down the building and filling the ground floor with rubble and driving across that and reaching up and mashing the rest of the building down.”

The high-reach machine came out of Southern Utah, Schultz said, adding that Reynolds Excavation out of Salt Lake is the subcontractor tasked with the actual demolition process.

Schultz added the project has also involved removing all of the old hospital’s asbestos, equipment and hazardous fluids.