Published March 2005

Providence plans for growth

Illustration courtesy of Providence Everett Medical Center The building design may change, but this conceptual rendering of Providence Everett Medical Center’s planned $400 million expansion over the next 15 to 20 years shows how the regional medical center plans to grow to serve the area’s increasing need for health-care services.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Providence Everett Medical Center announced plans in mid-February to replace aging health-care facilities at its north Everett Colby Campus and expand the size of the regional medical facility over the next 15 to 20 years with an investment of more than $400 million — one of the largest private building investments in the city’s history.

The plan was announced as Providence prepared for its March 2 celebration of its first 100 years of medical care services in Everett, with hospital staff noting the importance of preparing for the next century of care.

The medical center and its consultants have spent five years preparing their expansion plan for meeting the county’s health-care needs as its population approaches 1 million residents in 2025, an increase of more than 300,000 from today’s level.

“Many patients are being cared for in buildings built in the 1920s. Often, those buildings and rooms cannot even accommodate today’s medical technology. The new bed towers will even provide all private rooms,” said Patty DeGroodt, PEMC’s chief strategic officer. “Our master plan for the site would replace those older facilities and add many new structures in an expanded campus that would serve the future needs of people in the area.”

The master plan includes several phases, which allow the medical center to finance the work while keeping the facility operating to serve patients, DeGroodt said in a press conference interview. Overall, these are the major elements of the master plan:

• The new buildings would replace current structures built in 1924, 1949, 1958 and 1966.
• Two new bed towers would be added, replacing aging structures and increasing total beds from 362 to 550. All would be single-bed rooms. Currently, 50 percent are double-bed rooms. PEMC is currently at maximum capacity. Last year, 204 patients had to be transferred to other hospitals because of bed shortages.
• Employment would increase by 2,200 jobs, from 2,433 to 4,633, with an average annual salary of $58,000.
• Parking spaces would be increased from 809 to 1,800 with the addition of two new parking garages.
• A new cancer care center would be built just north of the present medical center, in conjunction with The Everett Clinic.

If the master plan is accepted by the Everett City Council, which will hear the presentation March 16, the hospital would begin construction of the first phase in January. Since the facility already is operating at 150 percent capacity, the need to begin building is critical, PEMC administrators said.

Support for the plan has already come from the Snohomish County Economic Development Council, whose board noted in a letter to the Everett council that the expansion and “the 2,200 new jobs … will not only benefit the patients that rely on the world-class health care provided at the hospital but also the entire community, both economically and socially,” adding that during the 2000-2003 recession, Everett lost more than 13,000 jobs that need replacing.

Opposition to the plan has come from residents in the neighboring Donovan District of 1920s and 1930s-vintage homes, since the hospital plans to demolish 22 of the homes, about a quarter of the neighborhood’s 80 homes on the city’s registry of historic structures. However, the hospital and its predecessor, General Hospital Foundation, have been buying homes on the nearby expansion site for more than 20 years as owners move or die. Today, the hospital owns 21 of the homes that would need to be removed for the expansion to the east.

“We spent more than $1 million to have consultants evaluate past suggestions from the residents for other expansion areas,” DeGroodt said. “All of the three consultants saw the eastward expansion as the only viable option.”

The chosen option uses one existing building as the core for the new campus, making it essential that new buildings are able to attach to it. It also offers the option of building in phases while keeping the hospital open and allows financing to be spread over two decades, officials said.

Back to the top/March 2005 Main Menu