BANGOR, Maine — Eastern Maine Medical Center officials showed off the hospital’s new $305 million expansion on Tuesday, promising the eight-story structure would better serve patients for generations to come.

The hospital hosted about 200 community leaders, donors, supporters, contractors and government officials, including Maine Gov. Paul LePage, for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours Tuesday morning.

“Our patients and visitors will benefit from the most modern, patient-focused building we could create,” said Deborah Carey Johnson, the hospital’s president and CEO.

The hospital has named the new building the Penobscot Pavilion. Officials broke ground on the project in September 2013. It’s believed to be the most expensive single project in the city’s history, dwarfing other recent major Bangor construction efforts.

It’s home to EMMC’s new main entrance, which features a new gift shop, indoor trees and a lounge-style atmosphere with lots of seating and electrical outlets. The sixth floor holds private rooms for cardiology patients, and the seventh a huge expansion of the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, which now has 29 rooms. The amount of space available for neonatal infants grew from about 3,000 square feet to about 30,000 square feet, according to Helen McKinnon, a nurse and the hospital’s vice president of support services.

The rest of the pavilion is still in the works, and is scheduled to be fully operational sometime in the summer of 2017. That’s when new operating rooms, two more floors dedicated to cardiovascular services and a new space for women and families awaiting childbirth will debut.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who visited the hospital Tuesday and spoke at the ceremony, said he saw potential for the new facility to take a leadership role in grooming the next generation of doctors.

“I tell you, this is a great spot for a teaching hospital,” LePage told the crowd. “This would be a great spot to partner with the university, and with the expertise of Jackson Lab, and make this a university teaching hospital. Maine needs to develop its own doctors.”

Carey Johnson said the hospital wanted to provide more space and private rooms for its patients, and more amenities for their families, including things as simple as a washer and dryer for families on the NICU floor and couches that fold down into beds. Many of those improvements to the rooms stemmed from input from former patients and families who have stayed at the hospital. The designs for the new floors relied heavily on input from nurses and doctors, who recommended ways to improve efficiency and patient comfort, she added.

The eighth and fourth floors are dedicated largely to utilities and mechanical equipment.

The $305 million project has been funded through several sources, according to EMMC officials. Bond financing covered about $144 million. Another $141 million comes from operating and equity funds. Fundraising efforts through hospital staff and supporters brought in the remaining $20 million.

When officials broke ground on the project in 2013, they estimated it would cost $287 million. More than 50 contractors were involved in the construction project. The final price tag makes this construction project more than double the cost of Hollywood Casino and more than four times the cost of the city’s new arena and convention center.

EMMC is by far the region’s largest employer, with more than 4,000 workers in the hospital, ranging from doctors and nurses to kitchen staff and cleaners.

“It means a lot to make sure that our patients and families have the facilities that they deserve, which includes privacy and calmness and warmth,” McKinnon said. “It is an area that they can get their services from our wonderful doctors and nurses in the arena where life and death happens, and it shouldn’t happen where it’s not calm and caring.”

Asked how the costs of the project might impact the cost of services the hospital offers to patients, McKinnon said that the hospital budgeted for these improvements carefully, and expects to see more revenue as a result. How much it could affect those costs remains to be seen.

The expansion opens its doors to patients on June 7. Leading up to that day, hospital officials have been holding events for staff members, community leaders, donors and others to display the work that’s been done.

Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter at @nmccrea213.