Samaritan Medical Center and Rothschild/Breuer Associates, Syracuse, are expected to sign a restructured lease today that will allow the hospital to move forward with its $61 million expansion and renovation project.

Hospital spokeswoman Krista A. Kittle said the 99-year lease, which has been in place since about 1990, had to be reworked because the current parking area for clients using the medical office building adjacent to the hospital will be taken up by the project's parking garage.

Rothschild/Breuer Associates owns the medical building.

"Samaritan Medical Center is hopeful that tomorrow's review of the restructured lease and corresponding documents will end with both parties' signatures, which is the final step necessary for construction to begin," she said Wednesday.

Once the lease is finalized, project mobilization dates and additional information will be announced, she said.

The three-story parking garage, to be constructed at Washington and Woodruff streets, is the first phase of the Watertown hospital's expansion and renovation project.

HBE Corp., St. Louis, Mo., the project's developer, should simultaneously be starting the foundation for the 130,000-square-foot patient pavilion, the second phase in the project.

The third phase, renovation of 71,500 square feet of existing hospital space, will begin after that.

Clients using the medical office building who park in the Washington Street parking lot eventually will have spaces reserved in the parking garage.

Until then, the parking lot on Woodruff Street, which has about 200 spaces, will be reserved for medical building tenants and patients, Ms. Kittle said.