As Drs. John Keech and Dustan Osborn strolled through the completed, empty shell of the Auburn Cancer Center on Tuesday afternoon, they described what will fill it.

Over there, said Osborn, pointing toward the west windows on the first floor, will be a state-of-the-art linear accelerator, capable of pinpointing and radiating tumors with incredible precision. Also on the first floor is an area where doctors will plant radioactive seeds in tumors, lab space for blood tests and an area for patient examinations. Chemotherapy infusion stations will take up about half of the second floor.

The upshot is that by next June, the people of Auburn will have a 21,000-square-foot cancer treatment facility just west of Auburn Regional Medical Center, here in their own hometown, rivaling anything else in the nation, Keech said.

Keech, a medical oncologist with Olympia-based Capital Oncology, PLLC, which is developing the center, will serve as its first medical director. He said the facility will offer a single-source location for medical oncology or cancer chemotherapy and radiation therapy services.

“It’s going to mean that people will be able to stay here in Auburn for the totality of their cancer treatment,” Keech said. “They won’t have to be outsourced to other cities for treatments that are not currently available here. Right now, if someone needs specialized radiation therapy, we have to send them to Seattle or some other place. This will be absolutely state-of-the-art treatment for patients right here in Auburn.”

Part of Auburn Regional Medical Center, the center will take up 1½ floors of the 43,305-square-foot medical-office building. The hospital began construction on a contiguous 300-plus stall parking garage last fall. The City of Auburn and ARMC will share the garage.

The project is being developed on behalf of ARMC’s parent company, Universal Health Services. BN Builders, Inc. of Seattle is the contractor.

Interior work will begin next week and last four months. The chemotherapy area is expected to open first in April, and radiation treatment will start up in June after workers finish assembling the complex linear accelerator. Just off the first-floor waiting area will be a room for patients and cancer support groups to meet. It will include a resource center with books and pamphlets and other information.

When the Center is completed, the Regional Center for Cancer Care will move there from 222 2nd St. NW, opposite Wells Fargo Bank, where it has been for many years.

“Right now we have an old linear accelerator which is 20 years old and outdated, so if we have complex treatments we have to send them to Seattle,” Osborn said of the present Auburn Center for Cancer Care. “This has been needed for a long time; you can see how inadequate this place is.”

The new linear accelerator will be housed in a protective bunker with six-foot thick walls, four feet of concrete below and a slab of concrete above. Ultimately, Osborn said, a second accelerator will be added.

“We will be able to treat virtually all types of cancers that require radiation,” Keech said. “We will offer chemotherapy and biological therapies, what are called targeted therapies or treatments specific to certain types of cancers. We will also offer supportive care, helping the patient and the family to get through the maze of economic, social and medical concerns related to a cancer diagnosis and treatment.”

The center will be staffed with eight doctors.

Osborn said the closest like facility is at St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way.

Once the center is up and fully running in June, it should be able to serve about 100 patients a day.