Hospital announces new location

PALMER -- A new hospital to replace Valley Hospital in Palmer will be built overlooking the intersection of the Glenn and Parks Highways and should be open in spring of 2006. For people who keep their chins up, the location also offers a view of Knik Glacier and unobstructed mountain views, particularly to the east, south and west.

George Larson, CEO of Valley Hospital Association announced the planned purchase to employees and guests in the cafeteria of Valley Hospital in Palmer last Friday.

VHA administrators have been working for years on plans for a new hospital. The announcement of the hospital's real estate plans marks another milestone in a project that includes establishing a joint-venture company owned in part by the non-profit VHA with Dallas Texas-based Triad Hospitals Inc. as the majority partner. Triad will spend about $87.7 million to build the new hospital, Larson announced last week.

"If all goes well -- and we're looking at it going well -- we'll be in the new facility by early 2006," Larson said.

The new joint venture company will be called Mat-Su Valley Medical Center LLC. VHA members voted to pursue the partnership with Triad last November.

Mat-Su Valley Medical Center will purchase three plots of land, including the Best View RV and Mobile Home Park, Mat-Su Borough property occupied by a visitor's center, and an adjacent plot owned by the University of Alaska. In the Frontiersman's April 4 Classified section, the University ran a notice advertising its intent to sell that land.

The advertisement describes the property as between 10 and 20 acres. Larson said Friday there were two parcels of University land hospital officials are interested in.

Negotiations are also underway with Best View owner Bettie Watkins. Watkins' property is about 15 acres and is the core area of the planned hospital campus. One person in the audience Friday asked Larson what the plan was for the Veteran's Wall of Honor, a memorial adjacent to the visitor's center. Larson said the area is needed for parking, but that he hopes the memorial can stay where it is.

"There could be a new landscaping design, so it would flow and look very beautiful there," Larson said. If that's not possible Larson said, the hospital could find a new spot for the memorial that is comparable.

In order to get this far, VHA association members held an election Nov. 14, in which many employees showed their support for the joint venture. Some VHA members spoke out against Triad. Hospital management has held frequent meetings with employees along the way to keep them apprised of their plans.

Nancy Munson, a laboratory technician with 14 years at Valley, was at the meeting Friday. She said she is looking forward to the new hospital. Munson lives in Wasilla and works both in the Palmer lab and occasionally in a lab at medical center campus in Wasilla. She said Triad employees have visited her in the lab, but they haven't yet started to work directly with her department.

"They've toured the lab and said, 'Oh. This is the lab'," Munson said.

Munson gave her VHA managers high marks for openess. "This has not been a scary process for me at all."

Larson said that the joint venture expects to pay about $2 million for 21 to 32 acres. Hospital management looked at other locations, some of which weren't competitively priced, Larson said Friday.

"There are other properties that we've looked at -- well, some said five or six million," Larson said.

Hospital officials said both the cities of Palmer and Wasilla have expressed interest in providing water and sewer utilities to the site. Larson said Friday that the Mat-Su Borough has been enlisted to help in that effort.

VHA did not release any financial information about joint venture company's ownership percentage last week. Press materials did say Triad will spend $87.7 million to build the new hospital. VHA will contribute the value of its current assets to the joint venture. The percentage of ownership maintained by VHA will depend upon the value of those assets. Those assets were estimated to be between $15 million and $25 million VHA officials said prior to the election.