Source:  Google News – 3/2/11

By Christian Livermore
Times Herald-Record
Published: 2:00 AM - 03/02/11

TOWN OF WALLKILL — Not so very long ago, 707 E. Main St. was nothing but a swath of raw, hilly ground where, in June 2008, officials and dignitaries gathered to turn a few shovelfuls of dirt to christen the site.

Now, almost three years later, not just the bones, but much of the guts of a hospital — the first to be built in New York state in more than 20 years — have risen on the hill.

Scheduled to be finished in April and open sometime in the third quarter, the seven-story, 600,000-square-foot Orange Regional Medical Center will have 353 private rooms (it’s licensed for 383 beds), 40 intensive-care-unit rooms, a 10-bed Level 2 neonatal intensive care unit, a dedicated pediatric unit, 50 emergency room treatment areas, 1,632 parking spaces and a helipad.

Unlike at its two current campuses, where the hospital added on to the buildings as growing patient needs dictated, officials had the chance with the new hospital to start from the ground up and design a fully integrated building where the emergency room is next to the operating room, the bone and joint center is next to rehab, and so on.

They held more than 50 user groups with doctors, nurses and other staff, to tell them where to put things —
from blood-pressure cuffs to paper-towel holders.

“The main thing about the new hospital is efficiencies,” said hospital spokesman Rob Lee. “The hospital makes
sense.”

The total cost of the project is about $350 million, funded with $272 million in bonds through the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, the hospital’s own savings, and $21 million raised in a capital campaign. The hospital is continuing with fundraising to help with equipment purchases and other expenses.

The hospital has also bought 7.1 contiguous acres on Midway Park Drive, which fronts the hospital’s main
entrance, for a yet-to-be determined use.

New plans for old campuses
ORMC’s move to its new digs has cleared the way for new uses for its old campuses.Plans are under way to lease the Arden Hill campus in Goshen to Orange-Ulster BOCES, which will use it for classes, health-careers training and work-force development, and administrative services.

Two development corporations were set up several years ago and bought the campuses from ORMC to comply with state Department of Health requirements, which would not allow construction to go forward until the current campuses were sold. ORMC has been leasing the campuses from the development corporations.

The Arden Local Development Corp. is working through the permitting and regulatory issues that must be
resolved in order to lease to BOCES.

The planned 10-year, renewable lease will not be signed until that process is complete, said Michael Sullivan,
director of campus sales for Arden LDC.

Meanwhile, developer Tony Danza is still working on plans to turn the Horton campus into a health-care complex
that will tentatively include a skilled nursing/assisted living facility, a medical school campus and housing for
medical students and faculty.

“We’re severely underserved in the medical community in Orange, Sullivan and Rockland,” said Danza, who is
CEO of The Danza Group. “There’s a tremendous shortage of doctors.”

He would not say what assisted-living facilities or medical schools he was in talks with.

He expects to close on purchase of the Horton campus in October or November, and for the new tenants to begin
moving in within six to 12 months after that.

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