MURRAY — Cottonwood Hospital will cease to exist sometime in 2007.
But officials with Intermountain Health Care and the city of Murray promise residents who have depended on the hospital for the past 40 years will not be losing out.
Later this year, IHC will begin a $20 million expansion of The Orthopedic Speciality Hospital (TOSH), which has shared Cottonwood Hospital's Murray campus for the past 12 years. That facility, already regarded as one of the top sports medicine and orthopedic speciality facilities in the world, will add four operating rooms (for a total of 10) and a 24-bed inpatient center by 2005.
Most of the outdated Cottonwood Hospital will be razed to make room for parking, green space and future TOSH expansion. But a new and far superior traditional hospital will be built just one mile to the northwest as part of the $363 million, five-hospital complex to be known as the Intermountain Medical Center.
Cottonwood Hospital will remain open and functioning as a traditional community hospital until sometime in 2007, several months after the Medical Center opens a mile away — between State Street and the TRAX line, just north of 5300 South.
"If anything, the citizens of Murray will benefit and will experience enhanced services," said David Grauer, administrator of both Cottonwood Hospital and TOSH.
"Everything that is available at Cottonwood today and then some — quite significantly more, actually — will be located on the new site, and then Cottonwood will ultimately transform from a 200-bed traditional community hospital to an orthopedic speciality hospital. It will still be a vibrant, vital hospital. It will just be much more specialized than it has been in the past."
IHC will host a community meeting to discuss the expansion of TOSH, the future closure of Cottonwood Hospital and related topics 7 p.m. May 17 in the TOSH auditorium, 5770 S. Fashion Place Blvd. (300 East).
Construction of the Intermountain Medical Center on State Street remains on schedule, according to IHC spokesman Jess Gomez, with actual construction to begin this summer. Crews continue to clear and prepare the site.
"There's lots of heavy machinery over there now. They have brought down some warehouses and are in the process of finalizing site-preparation work," he said. "They will begin foundation work within the next couple of months."
Work on the expansion of TOSH also will begin this summer. The Intermountain Spine Institute for back and spine care will continue to be located next to TOSH and will be part of the expansion. The Wilkinson building, a former church on the northwest corner of the campus, will be razed this summer to make way for parking.
When the Intermountain Medical Center opens and Cottonwood Hospital closes, the buildings and wings that house the current Cottonwood radiation center, surgical center and some medical offices will remain standing. But "everything else will likely be going down eventually, including the in-patient tower and two-story middle section" of the hospital, Gomez said.
"It's not a loss," Murray Mayor Dan Snarr said of Cottonwood Hospital's ultimate demise. "The current hospital has gone beyond its usefulness as far as how it accommodates new technologies and being able to become more modular in its design."
Snarr said the nearby neighborhood will not be as heavily impacted by traffic and parking because the expanded TOSH will offer much more parking.
And with the addition of the 1.2-million-square-foot Intermountain Medical Center and a larger TOSH, Snarr predicts Murray will become world-renowned for its medical facilities — much like Rochester, Minn., home of the Mayo Clinic.
E-mail: zman@desnews.com