Health Care
Orange Regional plans new hospital
Gerry largesse paves the way
By KATHY KAHN

Alan Gerry, the self-made billionaire and Liberty resident, has set his sights on quality health care on the west side of the Hudson River.

The Gerry Foundation, which bought the site of the 1969 Woodstock music festival and turned it into a major performing arts venue, Bethel Woods, has anted up the needed cash to help bring a new hospital from paper to brick and mortar.

In a unique collaboration with the Community Foundation of Orange & Sullivan County, Orange Regional Medical Center and two newly formed not-for-profit holding companies, The Gerry Foundation gave a $4 million gift to ORMC and lent another $6 million to two newly formed not-for-profit holding companies, allowing the hospital to comply with a “certificate of need” from the state Department of Health.

In order for the hospital break ground on its new 500,000-square-foot facility in Middletown, the Department of Health required the hospital to have buyers in place and money on the table for its two existing hospitals.

Thanks to the generosity and what many involved called Gerry’s commitment to the community, both Horton and Arden Hill hospitals have been “sold” on paper, with the $10 million in proceeds allowing ORMC to move forward with its plans to break ground in the spring on its new state-of-the-art, 374-bed hospital on 64 acres it purchased on East Main Street in Middletown. In return, the hospital will “lease back” its two campuses at $325,000 per year until the new building is completed.

The new hospital will replace Horton Hospital in Middletown and Arden Hill Hospital in Goshen, which were merged under the ORMC entity four years ago. In addition to the two hospitals, ORMC operates several satellite facilities in Orange County, which are to remain in operation once the new hospital opens.

When the hospital is built and equipment and employees transfer to the new building, the two former hospitals will be put on the market ­ if buyers are not already waiting in the wings. While there are ongoing discussions with some interested parties and with the facilities’ respective municipalities, it had been a challenge to find money willing to wait for the hospital to be built and for ORMC to vacate its existing hospitals.

When asked for a forecast on both facilities’ approximate market value, realtor R.J. Smith, board president for the Community Foundation of Orange & Sullivan, said they will be sold at “market rate ­ whatever the market will be at that time.” He estimates both will sell, barring a bear market, for approximately the same amount that Gerry has put up through both his gift and the loan to the holding companies. A portion of the money will be managed through the Community Foundation of Orange & Sullivan, growing interest (and more capital) for the project.

With this phase of the Department of Health agreement complete, the necessary bonding and firming up construction details are next. ORMC’s President and CEO Scott Batulis said if all runs smoothly, the new hospital will be ready to open in 2011.

It will be the state’s first new hospital in more than two decades, and “it will be a first for the west side of the Hudson,” Batulis said. “There’s tremendous synergy going into the new building, where we will be able to offer many specialties and subspecialties that have not been available to our residents before. Both Orange and Sullivan county residents will truly have a world-class facility to serve them and their families’ future needs.”

Since the breakdown of Catskill Regional Medical Center and the ensuing partnership between the Harris facility and ORMC, Batulis said its only natural that “we plan to build this hospital with a focus on serving our region, not just Orange residents, but residents of Sullivan County as well.”

 

 

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