Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 11, 1995 TAG: 9503130054
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Extending sewer and water lines under the interstate to the second proposed site would cost $1.98 million, according to engineer Elvan Peed of Anderson & Associates Inc. He presented the estimate this week to the Montgomery County Public Service Authority, which would connect the hospital to Radford's sewer and water systems. The hospital paid for the $11,000 study.
Radford Community officials now are weighing the $1.98 million price tag - which the county expects the hospital to pay for - against the cost of extensive grading required for the hospital's original site on Virginia 177 south of Radford. The original site is closer to Radford and will be cheaper to connect to utilities.
"Those are what we are calling our primary sites," hospital spokeswoman Susan Lockwood said Friday. "Right now we're in the process of evaluating the pros and cons and are open to other possibilities."
Those include other sites in or closer to Radford. The hospital looked at most of the few other suitable tracts several years ago, and now may give some a second glance. Radford Community's location for the past five decades is hemmed in by a residential neighborhood.
In December, the hospital surprised Montgomery and Radford officials by taking out options on 110 acres south of the interchange of I-81 and Virginia 177.
That came nearly five years after the hospital announced plans to move to 156 acres off Virginia 177, between the Radford line and I-81, about one mile north of the newer site. The hospital still owns that land.
Though another Radford Community official at the time said the new site was considered the "primary location," Lockwood said Friday that doesn't mean the hospital has settled on it. "We have not abandoned the first site," she said. The options on the second chunk of land were "an idea that we were going to consider because of the topography of the land [on the first site], because we knew the grading would be expensive."
Lockwood said the hospital hopes to finish the evaluations of the two sites in the next 30 to 60 days, when it would announce the final site and architect.
The hospital still plans to file a certificate of need application with the state by late June, Lockwood said. That would kick off an evaluation that should lead to a decision on the certificate by December. The plans are still to begin construction next year and open the new hospital by late 1998, she said.
The location of the new hospital is important to the local governments because of tax revenues. Two years ago, Radford and Montgomery County reached an agreement to share tax revenues in a corridor along Virginia 177 between Rock Road at the city line and just south of I-81. The agreement set up a four-stage process to incrementally develop the corridor and public utilities from the city line outward. The original hospital site, and related growth expected to accompany it, was a primary motivator for the agreement, which forestalled any attempt by Radford to annex the area from the county.
But the second hospital site is only partly in the corridor. That means if Radford Community chose that site, and if the related growth occurred outside the corridor, then the city wouldn't share in all of the tax revenue from growth.
Bob Asbury, Radford's city manager, said this week it would definitely be to the city's advantage if the hospital stuck with the first site.
by CNB