CLEVELAND -- The Cleveland Clinic's new heart center is set to open on Friday.

Patients won't begin moving into the $506 million heart center for a few more weeks, but the grand opening of the Miller Family Pavilion has begun.

Three years ago, the clinic's new heart and vascular and urological institute was just a dream, but now the million-square-foot facility is a reality and just about ready for business.

Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove is especially proud of the expansive rooftop view of northeast Ohio and what the building has contributed to the region.

In the last four years, the project has employed 4,000 construction workers and will create 1,000 new jobs.

"And that has a ripple effect in one year across Northeast Ohio of about $9 billion," said Cosgrove.

Robert Amstadt, of Gates Mills, is going home from the Cleveland Clinic Thursday, just having missed the opportunity to have his heart valve surgery in the new facility but a few weeks.

But he's looking forward to going there for his follow-up care.

"I think people just work better in a new facility, just like the Cleveland Indians, they started playing better when they moved into the new stadium," said Amstadt.

The new center has bigger operating rooms, able to accommodate a combination of new technologies, which will mean less invasive surgery.

"Honestly, there are procedures that we don't do today that we will be able to invent in the future to be less invasive because of that capability," said Dr. Bruce Lytle, chairman of the Heart and Vascular Institute.

The cardiac intensive care unit will have computerized beds and better access to procedure rooms.

The rooms are all single-patient with wide screen TVs and a pull-out bed if a family member wants to sleep in the room.

Administrators, though, have not lost sight of the fact that brick and mortar alone do not make a hospital.

"Buildings are just buildings. It's really the people in the buildings who take care of patients," said Cosgrove.

Cosgrove said the new facility will certainly help in the clinic's ability to recruit the brightest and most talented health professionals.

Sixty percent of the building was paid for with philanthropy, much of that coming from Cydell and the late Arnold Miller, the Solon family that founded Matrix Essentials.