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St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor clears major road block
By Irene Torres
KP News
In July, a proposed hospital in Gig Harbor cleared some
major hurdles that have caused major delays to the
construction schedule.
Budd Wagner, vice president of
marketing and communications for the Franciscan Health
System that is building the facility, says, “We’re very
excited to at last get the Gig Harbor City Council’s
approval of our Comprehensive Plan Amendment. This is
their first official action on St. Anthony Hospital
since it was approved by the State of Washington
Department of Health in May of 2004.”
The amendment to the city’s
Comprehensive Land Use Plan allows about 15 acres of the
site, located in Gig Harbor North, to be rezoned as
“business park,” the only zone within city limits that
allows, as “conditional use,” for a hospital to be
built.
“Although the need for the hospital
was confirmed by the Washington State Department of
Health more than two years ago, the Gig Harbor City
Council made its first official decision regarding the
hospital (July 10),” says hospital spokesman Gale
Robinette. “This approval puts the hospital through its
first major gate on the pathway toward getting a
building permit. We are thrilled!”
The procedure for gaining approval
for a new hospital has been an obstacle course, until
recently stalled like traffic on the Tacoma Narrows
Bridge. The city will hire a staff person, to be paid by
FHS, to help guide the application through review. This
is a common practice in small municipalities when
dealing with large construction developments.
In August 2003, the cost of the
project was estimated at $94 million. Robinette says,
“Given that the cost of construction materials and
medical technology has increased the overall cost of the
hospital by $15 million as a result of delays, we are
working hard to ensure that the rest of the approval
phases go as smoothly as possible.”
For more than a year, a community
committee has been meeting regularly to address and
resolve traffic concerns.
“Franciscan and the city have
reached contractual agreements which pertain to traffic
improvements that will need to be built to open the
hospital,” says Gig Harbor City Administrator Mark
Hoppen. “The St. Anthony Hospital project is ready to
apply for a rezone and conditional use permit, and then
to receive a building permit. Franciscan hopes to
receive its building permit by the end of the year and
the city hopes to provide it earlier than that. If we
meet this objective, then St. Anthony should be serving
Peninsula residents by early 2009.”
St. Anthony Hospital will be an
80-bed state-of-the-art community hospital, located in
the north area of Gig Harbor, just off Canterwood
Boulevard near Burnham Drive at State Route 16.
Plans include 24-hour emergency
services; medical, surgical and critical care units;
inpatient and outpatient surgery; a heart
catheterization laboratory; diagnostic services,
including MRI, CT scans, ultrasound and mammography; and
physical, occupational and speech therapies.(https://www.fhshealth.org/SAH/default.asp)
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership (www.zgf.com)
was named architect for St. Anthony Hospital in June
2004. Sellen Construction (www.sellen.com)
has been selected as general contractor. Named after St.
Anthony of Padua, a patron saint of sailors and
fishermen, honoring the maritime tradition of the
Peninsula communities, the new hospital will create
about 450 family-wage jobs.
“I think the entire Peninsula
community can celebrate the fact that the hospital
project is at long-last moving forward,” Wagner says.
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