McKenzie-Willamette Hospital to move to 12th & Willamette?
May 27, 2008
Coalition for Health Options In Central Eugene-Springfield (CHOICES)

As you probably know, we at CHOICES have been sitting on the sidelines… watching the “Hospital War” drag on and on endlessly… waiting for some kind of sense to set in… watching as one hopelessly flawed proposal after another comes and goes… remembering the proposal to move to the existing EWEB site… and then the Delta Ridge site… and then the Riverfront Research Park site… with the Lane County Fairgrounds and a few proposals by John Musumeci of Arlie & Company thrown in for good measure… waiting, waiting and still waiting… and then, like a sun break after a long Oregon winter, a ray of hope long after one has given up.

In particular, The Register-Guard recently reported:

McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center is looking again at downtown Eugene for its new hospital site. McKenzie-Willamette officials on Thursday [May 22] said they are interested in building on property in downtown Eugene that includes a medical clinic operated by PeaceHealth—McKenzie-Willamette’s chief rival in the local health care market. …

The Eugene City Council will be meeting this Wednesday, May 28, to discuss potential hospital sites for McKenzie-Willamette. Staff is now recommending the old Eugene Clinic site at 12th & Willamette, currently owned by PeaceHealth, as the preferred site:

The City Manager recommends the City Council support the proposal shown in Attachment B for a proposed hospital site at [12th] & Willamette.

Attachment B is a letter dated May 21, 2008, from Eugene Planning & Development Department Director Susan Muir to McKenzie-Willamette CEO Maurine Cate. It reads in part:

We are pleased to present to you a site for McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in downtown Eugene. Although we are prepared to assist you in exploring any site in the City of Eugene, for the following reasons we hope that you will choose to locate your new hospital at [12th] & Willamette. …

The site at [12th] & Willamette meets all of your identified needs:

The letter from Susan Muir goes on to detail how McKenzie-Willamette can partner with the City of Eugene, working in an area brought into the urban renewal district, to build a hospital on parts of the two city blocks between 11th & 13th, Willamette & Olive, plus portions of the blocks to the east and west. In particular, the proposal contemplates building a parking garage across from the hospital proper. Of course, the location is in the core of Eugene, south of the river, and is well served not only by north-south and east-west roadways, but also by the Lane Transit District station and EmX service across the street.

(We note that the proposal currently before the Eugene City Council bears some resemblance to a proposal we made almost two months ago, which in turn had its roots in the CHOICES settlement agreement with PeaceHealth over three years ago, which was influenced by the work several years prior by a group we remember as Citizens for a Hospital in the Heart of Eugene, or CHHE for short.)

If some are concerned about building a hospital in the middle of downtown on a site smaller than, say, a football field, one can find an example as close as in Portland of a hospital built on similar site with three or four times as many beds as McKenzie-Willamette is planning to have: Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital in northwest Portland sits on just a few city blocks, even though it has 539 beds—far more than the 114 beds that McKenzie-Willamette currently has.

Of course, sitting on the sidelines, as we have been for some time now, we have learned not to get our hopes up too much. We have seen so many proposed hospital locations come and go, one begins to wonder why it seems so hard to site a hospital.

Although some have tried to blame the Eugene City Council for the failure—and to make political hay doing so—such critics are wrong. The truth of the matter is there is plenty of blame to go around and many different parties have held up the siting of the hospital. For example, it is probably true that McKenzie-Willamette could have opened a hospital some time ago, say, near 2nd & Chambers or in Glenwood… if only the affected doctors didn’t object to the locations.

But for now, rather than look back at what hasn’t worked, we prefer to look forward, hoping many parties will come together to site a hospital in the heart of Eugene.

In conclusion, let’s hope we can all begin moving forward together…

For CHOICES,
Rob Zako
343-5201
rzako@efn.org