Nashville's Music City Center will serve as a site for expanded hospital bed capacity and treat patients testing positive with COVID-19 as Tennessee braces to meet a surge in demand as the virus spreads, Gov. Bill Lee announced Thursday.

The convention center in downtown Nashville will serve as a 1,600-bed, non-ICU facility for positive patients.

Music City Center officials have been in talks with the state since Sunday. Engineers conducted a walk-through of the convention center earlier this week to determine the feasibility of using the site for emergency use, two people familiar with the plans told The Tennessean on Thursday.

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Mayor John Cooper is expected to do a walk-through of the site on Friday, which is in need of major alterations — including HVAC adjustments — to get exhibition halls under negative pressure, running piping for oxygen and setting up temporary modular partitions for patients.

Lt. Col. Sonny B. Avichal, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Nashville, said Thursday that planning for how to design and build out sites to be rapidly accessible started weeks ago. He said the process will come in four phases: site selection, building, supplies and then staffing.

The announcement comes after Lee and members of his administration told lawmakers Wednesday the state will see hospital bed shortages and need to utilize space in college dormitories, convention centers and hotels to deal with a "crush" of new patients as cases continue to balloon.

Several projections show that the new coronavirus could kill thousands of Tennesseans in the coming months and peak demand could be around April 19. The dire picture was presented by Lee and and other top state officials Wednesday, including director of the state's COVID-19 unified command Stuart McWhorter.

The state said Thursday that FEMA has approved Tennessee's major disaster declaration, accelerating work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build capacity statewide.

Across Tennessee there are 168 hospitals, mental health and long-term care facilities with the capacity of roughly 24,700 beds, according to state hospital reports.

In addition to Music City Center in Nashville, the Gateway Shopping Center in Memphis will serve 170 COVID-19 patients who need hospital care.

Officials have also selected the Chattanooga Convention Center and Knoxville Expo Center for surge capacity. They are also working to build out support services, furniture, supplies and staff to ensure services at the additional sites.

Those who want to help at the locations are asked to sign up for Tennessee Medical Reserve Corp. Both medical professionals and volunteers are needed.

“Music City Center prides itself in being a valuable resource to the community,” President and CEO of Music City Center Charles Starks said in a statement. “We are honored to serve as a regional alternative care site for the state of Tennessee and city of Nashville during this critical time.”

Metro Nashville's coronavirus task force chair Dr. Alex Jahangir declined to share details of where and what alternative care sites would look like in Nashville on Thursday morning during the city's regular health briefing, deferring to the state.

Without sharing specific information, he said the number of extra hospital beds set up would be "substantial" and what models have shown the community will need.

While a state-led initiative, Jahangir said the city officials and regional experts have been involved since the "first moment" in the discussion for additional hospital locations.

"We are very instrumental in coming up with how that will be operational," he said. "We're gonna really make sure people in our reach are taken care of so we're very involved."

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The governor's office presented a slide Wednesday showing there were 32% of floor beds and 32% of ICU beds available, along with 69% of accounted ventilators statewide. Lee said based on some projections, the state could need an additional 7,000 beds to meet the demand during a surge in the coronavirus pandemic.

Hospitals across the nation already operate near capacity, even in ordinary times. With more cases of COVID-19, facilities will soon run out of space, forcing officials to look elsewhere to set up more beds.

Jahangir says he monitors hospital capacity every day. On Wednesday, that was 30% to 35% of possible hospital beds available in the city. But that number varies day to day.

“So when I think we're fine, it is true that this moment in time we are fine. But any day, if we spiked up in the number of patients that need hospitalization, that can quickly get washed away,” Jahangir said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had also evaluated three of University of Tennessee’s athletic and fitness facilities be used to house an overflow of patients, the university confirmed to The Commercial Appeal.

In coronavirus hot spots, state and local governments have already stepped in with unprecedented efforts to add thousands of hospital beds.

In King County in Washington State, officials leased a motel to use as quarantine space and transformed a soccer field into a makeshift hospital. In California, closed hospitals have been reopened.

Chicago has turned its McCormick Place convention center into a 3,000-bed care center to treat COVID-19 patients. And preparations are underway at the New Orleans convention center to be used as an emergency field hospital, similar to what the city did during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Joel Ebert contributed to this report.

Yihyun Jeong covers politics in Nashville for USA TODAY NETWORK - TENNESSEE. Reach her at yjeong@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @yihyun_jeong.