This week’s announcement that a new rehabilitation center expansion is arising in North Waco strikes us as one of the big local stories of 2010, even if we’re not quite through March yet. Seldom does a project come along that offers so many pluses and in so many exciting ways to our community.

As Trib staff writer Cindy V. Culp revealed in her Page One story, Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center and Scott & White Healthcare are investing $4.5 million in a project that takes their two rehabilitation units — a 24-bed unit on Scott & White’s Temple campus, a 29-bed unit at Hillcrest’s Herring Avenue campus — and combines them in drastically renovated quarters at the Herring campus. In doing so, they forge one of the largest acute rehabilitation facilities in Texas.

This project means 34 new jobs at the expanded facility. It also means construction work, complete with a local contractor, CMCT, and the promise of local subcontractors when possible. More than 150 employees will work at the entire Herring Avenue campus by the time fall arrives.

This announcement is terrific news for the North Waco neighborhood where Hillcrest was a driving force until it moved its operations across town and out near Interstate 35. With this project, Hillcrest again makes good on its promise not to let the old campus fall into disrepair. It gives renewed relevancy to a vibrant neighborhood.

We’re also excited about plans to fire up two new training programs at what will be called Scott & White Center for Rehabilitative Medicine — one a four-year residency for recent medical school graduates specializing in physical medicine and rehabilitation, the other a two-year program for physical therapists who have earned their professional doctoral degrees. It’s the first time Scott & White has based a medical education program in Waco. We hope it’s just a beginning.

The project also not only bolsters the partnership of Temple-based Scott & White and Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center but further solidifies Waco’s growing reputation as a medical hub. The Scott & White Center for Rehabilitative Medicine hopes to gain national recognition for the treatment of people who are impaired enough to need round-the-clock care. It’ll help those suffering everything from hip fractures to stroke to traumatic brain injury.

Expanding prior services at two medical campuses to produce something even better: That’s what this project is all about. When it’s up and running, Central Texans will no longer have to travel as far as Houston for increasingly specialized medical rehab services that will be offered right here in Waco. And if all of this rejuvenates one of Waco’s most potentially vivid neighborhoods, then so much the better.