Hospital confirms site
By Thomas Gnau, Journal Business Writer, E-mail:
tgnau@coxohio.com
Click on image for larger view.
 The new Middletown Regional Hospital will
be northeast of Union Road
and Ohio 122, hospital officials confirmed Thursday. Most of the
replacement hospital will be built on the approximately 112 acres that
Middletown will buy today, city officials said.
The city is buying land from East Mark, a limited liability
partnership between City Councilman Perry Thatcher and area developer
Adam Cristo, city Law Director Les Landen said.
The city’s contribution toward the land’s purchase is $5.5 million,
with the hospital paying the balance on a total price that is
“slightly above” that amount, Landen said. Landen said the
hospital will buy additional land. |
“Tomorrow, 200 acres (in all) are going to be purchased,” Larry James,
Middletown Regional vice president and chief marketing officer, said
Thursday. He declined to identify other owners from whom the hospital
is purchasing land. Hospital leaders have long said they want a
sprawling “health and technology” campus of educators, research firms
and vendors tied to their new facility.
James said a cancer center will be tied to the new hospital, a center
operated by the hospital and “another group.” He would not offer
details about the other organization. “That’s one of many partnerships
that will go on this campus,” James said.
He also said the new hospital will offer new and strengthened programs
in cardiology, trauma, oncology and surgical services. “Those are the
cornerstones of what we’re putting out there on (Ohio) 122,” James
said.
“We are extremely pleased to complete this step,” Doug McNeill,
Middletown Regional’s president and chief executive, said in a
statement. “During the past year, we’ve accomplished a great deal,
including engineering, site planning, environmental and space planning
for the new facility.
“In 2004, we will complete work on schematic design, design
development, construction documents and the finalization of clinical,
programmatic, capital and other partnerships,” McNeill added. “Once
these partnerships are completed, we will be prepared to discuss the
full scope of the project.”
BOTH THE property on which the city is closing today and the
additional property city leaders expect the hospital to buy are wholly
within Middletown city limits, Landen said.
“That was the purpose of the whole deal — to keep the hospital here,”
he said.
“They’re (Middletown’s) second biggest employer,” Mayor Bob Wells
said. “It’s very important that we keep them here.”
Union residents were left considering what the announcement meant for
them.
“When I first came here there was cattle next to me and crops across
the street,” said Walt Hutchinson, who has lived on North Union for 27
years. “That soon will be all gone.”
“It’s a smart move for (the hospital),” Hutchinson added. “They’ve
outgrown their present location. Just like the people in Hunter across
from Fenwick, we here will lose our country setting. I have been lucky
— I could walk out my back door and go deer hunting.”
The new Fenwick High School is being built nearby south of Ohio 122 in
Franklin Township’s Hunter area.
The southern edge of the land the city is buying for the hospital is
about 350 feet north of Ohio 122. The property is adjacent to and east
of North Union.
Just to the south and adjacent is a smaller parcel owned by Bonita
Drive Church of Christ. Zane Roe, an elder with the church and owner
of Lebanon’s Blue Diamond Realty, said in October that the church will
sell the hospital about 65 acres in that area. Roe declined to comment
Thursday, but offered to say more after today.
AS LANDEN described the transaction, the city will hold the land until
the hospital demonstrates that it is “financially ready” to build its
replacement facility. The city will then deed the land to the
hospital, holding a mortgage against it for four decades as outlined
in a “memorandum of understanding” with the hospital that council
approved in December 2002. If the hospital closes, the city could
foreclose on the land, Landen said.
“At the end of the 40 years, the mortgage goes away without being
repaid,” he said. “That’s how it’s different from your house
mortgage.”
Though Thatcher has abstained from council votes on the hospital, he
was a public proponent — beginning in spring 2002 — of keeping the
hospital inside the city. At the time, hospital leaders were
considering a site along Interstate 75 in Monroe.
“I feel it should stay in Middletown,” Thatcher told The Journal
editorial board in June 2002. He pointed to himself as the only
council member who would “stand up and say how I feel.”
Thatcher could not be reached for comment Thursday. Cristo would say
only: “I’m expecting to close on it (the land) tomorrow.”
Echoing comments made earlier this week, Wells said he wants to meet
with all three Warren County commissioners, to urge them to help pay
for improvements to North Union and its intersection with Ohio 122.
Deficit-strained Middletown can pay for only so many improvements on
North Union, city officials have said.
City Engineer David Mick shared with The Journal on Thursday a map
that showed how planned improvements on Union beyond northern city
limits, some 1,000 feet, may have to be eliminated from the project.
Wells hasn’t spoken with county commissioners yet, but he was
confident a meeting could be arranged.
“I’m going to do everything I can,” Wells said.
THE LOCATION announcement is the culmination of year’s work, James
said. In September 2002, hospital leaders said the institution would
move from its current home on a 26-acre McKnight Drive campus to
another spot closer to I-75, near Ohio 122.
“People really need to understand we’ve only been working on this
particular site for a year,” James said.
But others have been frustrated with the pace at which the hospital
has shared information. City Manager Ron Olson this week said he was
“anxious” to have the hospital’s announcement.
Before hospital leaders weighed a possible site in Monroe, they first
had their sights set on Greentree and Union roads in Warren County’s
Turtlecreek Township. More than a year of public opposition against
any move to that area ensued.
The hospital’s surrounding campus will also have a professional office
building and the fledgling Greentree Health Science Academy, a
partnership between the hospital, Butler Tech and the Warren County
Career Center.
James declined to answer questions about the replacement hospital
building, saying it was still in a “design phase.”
Hospital officials have put the value of the new facility at $100
million to $200 million. Ground will be broken for the project in the
first quarter of 2005, with the hospital expected to open in the first
quarter of 2008.
Beginning in 2000, McNeill said leaders of the land-locked hospital
had to at least consider rebuilding and moving. Parts of the hospital
structure are more than 80 years old. At one point, McNeill said the
hospital could not survive the decade at its current home.
Published 01.09.04
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By Thomas Gnau, Journal
Business Writer, E-mail: tgnau@coxohio.com
Middletown Regional
Hospital said it has under contract “a significant portion of the property”
it needs to build a replacement hospital north of Ohio 122 and Commerce
Drive.
The property is “in an
area removed from commercial and residential development,” the hospital said
in a statement Thursday.
The announcement
acknowledges that Middletown Regional will build north of Ohio 122. But the
hospital did not say how much land it controls or precisely where the future
hospital will be.
Middletown Assistant
City Manager Preston Combs said he believes at least most of the development
will be within Middletown city limits, but he has seen nothing definitive
yet. It is not clear if all of the development will be inside the city
limits.
“I still haven’t seen a
final map,” Combs said.
Combs said he thought
the hospital intends to allow businesses along Commerce to remain.
Middletown Regional Vice
President and Chief Marketing Officer Larry James could not be reached for
comment.
Several homeowners on
North Union Road have said Henkle-Schueler, a Warren County developer, has
contacted them on behalf of the hospital to open negotiations for their
properties. Three residents have pointed to a Henkle-Schueler map showing
part of the hospital development crossing Union where it runs north of Ohio
122 today.
Planning for the
hospital and its accompanying “health and technology” campus will extend
through the fall, the hospital said. A closing on areas under contract could
be completed this summer.
In a development
agreement, Middletown has pledged to give the hospital money to buy land.
But Combs said the city will not buy the land or negotiate with property
owners.
No land acquisition
money has been forwarded to the hospital yet, Combs said.
With land acquisition
assistance, a health care grant and infrastructure improvements, the city
will invest up to $10 million in the project over the next eight to 10
years.
Published 04.11.03
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Hospital site pleases most
Reprinted with permission of the Middletown Journal
By Thomas Gnau, Journal Business Writer
With the announcement less than a day old, most public observers
seemed to agree that Middletown Regional Hospital’s decision to
rebuild in Middletown makes sense. State Sen. Scott Nein, R-Middletown, called the news “great.”
“It’s wonderful news,” businessman and former state senator Barry
Levey said. Levey’s family long supported the hospital financially as
the institution grew.
But one Middletown city councilman, Perry Thatcher, adopted a
cautious stance. Asked if he thought the decision was good news,
Thatcher said, “I’m not sure. I mean, I’m not sure. I hope it is. I
think it is.”
Though Levey said any location in Middletown is “much better” than
elsewhere, he questioned whether the city and the hospital can handle
the debt the project may entail. “That’s what the (council) and the (hospital’s) board will have to
decide,” Levey said.
Hospital leaders said they will try to craft a joint economic
development agreement with Middletown within 60 days to build a
replacement hospital near Ohio 122, east of Interstate 75. Thatcher hinted that he wanted to see that agreement finalized. “I
never get excited ahead of time,” he said.
In June, he arguably took the lead among council members in
publicly urging hospital leaders not to leave the city. Other city
officials have said they consistently made that appeal behind closed
doors. “It’s not for me to decide,” Thatcher said when asked about his
role. “I was just expressing my views.”
A more precise location for a replacement hospital has not been
identified, but the announcement focuses attention, at least for now,
on Middletown and not Monroe or Turtlecreek Township, entities that
earlier had been raised as possibilities.
“It answers a lot of those unresolved issues trying to deal with
those other political subdivisions,” Nein said. If the replacement hospital is built east of I-75 — or anywhere in
Warren County — it will be in the district of Richard Finan, president
of the Ohio Senate.
“More power to them if they can get a piece of land and put it in
the district,” Finan said. Larry James, Middletown Regional vice president and chief marketing
officer, on Friday could not say whether the new hospital would be
north or south of Ohio 122 or east or west of Union Road.
Finan said the decision to stay in Middletown is good for the
community and the hospital. “They probably would have had problems in fundraising and so on and
so forth by moving outside,” the Cincinnati Republican said.
If the hospital waits for state assistance, that assistance should
be forthcoming, he said. “They’re going to have to stand in line for that,” he added. Said Finan: “This is probably a 10-year project.” No one disagrees that state assistance — particularly with
improving an already burdened Ohio 122/I-75 interchange — will be
crucial.
“Obviously, we would help them,” Ohio Department of Transportation
spokesman Brian Cunningham said, referring to overall planning and
evaluation of the interchange’s future needs.
Asked if transportation decision-makers are more open to the idea
of improving an existing interchange instead of building a new one,
Cunningham said the processes are similar. But he added that as a “general rule of thumb” there are fewer
“complications with an existing (interchange) rather than a brand new
(interchange).”
Nein said he believes department Director Gordon Proctor has been
“much more supportive and encouraging” regarding improving the Ohio
122 interchange. “That’s something I’ve found from our firsthand discussions,” Nein
said.
Last year, hospital leaders sought the creation of a new I-75
interchange at Greentree Road. Proctor at one point urged hospital
President and Chief Executive Officer Doug McNeill to rely on existing
roads in the area. James has pointed to 2007 as the projected opening of the
hospital’s replacement facility on Ohio 122
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Doctor says hospital move good
medicine for future
By Thomas Gnau
The opening of the $100 million Middletown Regional Hospital in
four years off Interstate 75 could herald improved health care for
generations to come, according to one of the city’s well known
physicians.
Speaking at a public meeting held at hospital’s current location
Tuesday night, Dr. Greg Siewny said he regularly fields questions from
patients about the hospital’s plans. He believes the plans are good
news for the community.
“For the average Middletown person, I really believe that,” said
Siewny, who has delivered hundreds of children at the hospital.
Siewny spoke at a meeting sponsored by Third Ward Councilwoman
Nancy Nix, who arranged for a question-and-answer session with
hospital officials, including Doug McNeill, its president and chief
executive officer.
Since 2001, McNeill and other hospital leaders have said Middletown
Regional’s survival depends on finding a home closer to I-75 because
it needs more space and wants to strengthen its research capabilities.
Last month, McNeill confirmed the hospital would build a
600,000-square-foot facility northeast of Union Road and Ohio 122. For
nearly 90 years, the hospital has called McKnight Drive home, where
the hospital’s nine buildings occupy 15 acres of a 26-acre hilltop
campus.
“There’s no room at the inn here,” McNeill said. “We are out of
room.”
Middletown Regional leaders said they want not only to rebuild, but
to welcome partners, vendors and educators to its new 200-acre “health
and technology” campus. He said they anticipate the hospital’s current
staff of 2,000 will grow to nearly 3,000 by 2020. Other firms on the
campus could employ hundreds more, McNeill added.
Last month, the city spent $5.5 million to buy the 112-acre site in
Warren County that will make part of the hospital’s future home.
Warren County commissioners have not agreed to financially assist in
road projects tied to the hospital’s move. Hospital officials said the
move will happen regardless.
At least one resident wanted more information from McNeill. Jim
Lowe, of Santa Fe Road, asked if the hospital was willing to share
details on financial projections and the hospital’s business plan for
its new campus site. Though he is not opposed to the relocation plan,
Lowe did express concern about what might ensue if the hospital failed
at its new location. McNeill told Lowe he could not publicly discuss
privileged financial data.
“Would you do it privately if we all signed confidentiality
agreements?” Lowe, 58, asked. “I’m willing to sign one.”
McNeill almost immediately latched on to that idea. He told Lowe he
wouldn’t object to sharing data with perhaps a small group of
residents, if they agreed to maintain confidentiality.
“I think our board will allow a limited number to do that,” McNeill
said.
The nearly 90-minute session had few moments of friction. At one
point, Larry James, Middletown Regional’s vice president and chief
marketing officer, asked Lowe to allow some of the other nearly 30
attendees to speak.
“We don’t need to rehash old subjects,” James said.
Lowe appeared to bridle at that, telling James at one point: “The
arrogant attitude you’re adopting...”
Nix interrupted Lowe, saying, “No, don’t do that.”
Lowe later publicly apologized to James.
Sandy White, a North Union Road resident, she said was alarmed when
she learned that a stretch of Union — north of Ohio 122 within city
limits — would be widened to five lanes in construction scheduled to
begin in late summer or fall. The city plans to widen Union and expand
its intersection with Ohio 122.
“That kind of almost comes through my living room,” White said of
the widening.
David Mick, the city’s engineer, told White that work will take
place within the road’s existing right-of-way. He offered to send
White a detailed plans.
Published 02.11.04
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