Demolition of the former Sentara Williamsburg, VA Community Hospital will begin on Tuesday, Sept. 4.

The work is expected to take three months. Next summer the College of William & Mary will begin construction on a new 109,000-sqaure-foot building to house the School of Education and various other departments. The new structure will cost $48 million.

For the last several months, the college has used more than 200 spaces at the old hospital site for student parking. That will continue during the demolition process.

S.B. Cox of Richmond was hired to raze the old hospital. Work will commence at 8 a.m. each day. The new W&M School of Education should be finished in the spring of 2010.

The college completed a study of the property and determined that retrofitting the old hospital would cost about the same as tearing down the building and starting over.