PROVO — Located in one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation, Utah Valley Regional Medical Center is feeling pressure to keep up, and some residents living south of the hospital may need to get out of the way.
The hospital, run by Intermountain Healthcare, recently announced plans to expand south to 800 North between 500 West and Freedom Boulevard. UVRMC is not aggressively pursuing the land, however. Hospital administrator Steve Smoot said IHC plans to buy only those houses that are voluntarily put up for sale.
The hospital already owns 17 of the 82 properties it hopes to purchase and is negotiating the sale of five more. Within the next six to eight weeks, 13 houses, located between 940 North and 880 North, will be torn down to make way for a new parking lot.
Hospital administrators met with residents of the neighborhood they hope to buy up earlier this week in a meeting organized to calm rumors.
If homeowners don't want to sell, Smoot said, IHC does not plan to buy.
"The city is not going to condemn the property," he said. "I do not want to use eminent domain. I want to work with owners."
Smoot said although the expansion is needed — the hospital is reaching its bed capacity — he is most concerned that people are treated fairly. He even proposed forming a committee of residents to keep the hospital informed of public opinion as the project progresses.
Some residents, though, have no intention of ever selling their homes.
LaWana Draper, 940 N. 300 West, did not know before coming to the meeting that the hospital was interested in purchasing her house. She was shocked when Smoot presented a map of the proposed expansion, which included her home.
Draper said her house was deeded to her family in a trust after her mother-in-law's death.
"I have always believed I would live here until I died," she said. "That hasn't changed. Now I just worry what kind of neighbor the hospital is going to be."
Many residents at the meeting expressed concern that the hospital was not taking care of the property it already owns in the area. The decline of the neighborhood would decrease the value of their property, they said.
Camille Farias, who has lived for almost three years in the area the hospital intends to buy, said the houses across the street from where she lives on 300 West were nice, well-kept properties before the hospital purchased them.
"Now the little picket fences are falling down and the yards are filled with weeds," she said. "The hospital mowed the lawns today — because of this meeting — but it hadn't been done for six months before that."
The hospital can only learn from its mistakes, Smoot said. He said IHC will make an effort to keep properties up and construction vehicles off neighborhood roads. But, he said, nobody knows how the situation will change in the next 10 years.
IHC does not have any definitive plans for the property and, at least until enough land is acquired to accommodate a project, plans to continue to rent out the majority of homes. If the hospital is unable to purchase the land it needs for expansion, it will look for other options, Smoot said.
Finding other solutions may be a difficult task for the landlocked hospital, however.
After Provo School District rejected the hospital's offer to purchase Fox Field, bordered to the north by busy Bulldog Boulevard and the west by 500 West, the residential area to the south of the neighborhood became the hospital's best hope for expansion, said Bryant Larsen, region director of community relations for UVRMC.
"We are just looking to accommodate the long-term health-care needs of the community," he said. "We've exhausted all other options."
Although further expansion is unavoidable, UVRMC is not in a hurry to acquire more land, Larsen said. It took nearly 10 years for the hospital to buy up the homes occupying the site for the proposed parking lot, and Larsen doesn't expect to get ownership of the other houses any quicker.
"This is a long-term, forward-looking approach to expansion," he said. "When the houses become available, we will purchase them."
E-mail: estuart@desnews.com