Ambulatory Care Center should be built & occupied in a year
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Officials took part Nov. 29 in the groundbreaking for a new Ambulatory Care Center on the campus of North Adams Regional Hospital.
"This is a really special moment in the history of North Adams Regional Hospital and Northern Berkshire Health Systems, because we're officially commencing a project that reflects a partnership between our organization and Columbia Development," said NARH President John C.J. Cronin. "And for the first time in the history of this campus, we're developing a building which is not going to be owned by the hospital.
"This building is being developed by Columbia," Cronin continued, noting that Rich Rosen of the company was present.
"Rich has been the person that's gotten us to this point, coordinating the resources of Columbia and our institution with all of the myriad people," Cronin said, "from our site engineers, like Vince Guntlow, who really figured out how we could put both a parking structure on this campus and this building and make it work in very difficult circumstances."
Cronin said Rosen also assisted in working through a design that would allow a building to be built, financed through Columbia, and basically paid for by the physicians and the medical staff.
"So this is indeed a very unique venture, and one that I think foreshadows much of how we may do future development in health care, where we enter into partnerships with other players in our community to allow us to bring the assets to the table that we need to serve the community," he said. Cronin said this is "an era where the payers don't want to pay for it."
"So, despite all of those constraints, we're moving ahead to create here a wonderful, modern ambulatory care structure that will house physicians in about 45,000 square feet," he said.
This is the second phase of a campus transformation plan — a parking garage was constructed and opened earlier this year. Plans call for the building to be built and occupied by this time next year, Cronin said.
North Adams Mayor John Barrett III said the building is an important economic development project for the city and Northern Berkshire.
"At one time most of our medical offices were in downtown North Adams," Barrett said. "Now as the downtown is changing with new types of businesses coming there, we see that expansion now coming up to the hospital area, and that's part of our diversification, why this is so important.
"When [Cronin] came to see me several months ago to talk about how to make this project successful, how it could be affordable so that the rents here would be enticing to the prospective tenants of the building, we talked about doing a Tax Increment Financing plan, because it means that this will become a property-tax paying building at some point in time in the city."
"We see this as boding well for the future of the hospital, which of course is very important to the city of North Adams and the Northern Berkshire area," Barrett said.
Dr. Patrick O'Brien, president of the medical staff at NARH, said doctors look forward to occupying the new building. He noted that doctors now have offices in Clark House on the hospital campus, which has served its purpose for a number of years.
"We look forward to a new, modern facility to serve our community and our patients," O'Brien said.
Tags: hospital campus, NARH, NBH,
