Ellenville Regional Hospital announced last week that it has made a final payment of $300,000 to Westchester Medical Center, purchasing their remaining interest in the Ellenville Regional Hospital campus. The payment was the final step in a complicated transaction that included substantial assistance from Ulster County, and was completed a year ahead of schedule.

Ellenville Regional Hospital chief executive officer Steve Kelley called the payment good news for the hospital and the community. Kelley went on to explain the benefits of being in sole control of the campus' future.

The hospital's new entrance for its physical therapy department.   Photo by Stefan Spezio

"The value of this is that it frees the hospital to develop our campus. It opens up the freedom to be able to do other types of projects [such as] 155 senior housing units, which is a massive construction project underway. The magnitude of that is only just beginning to be seen. We've only got the first floor down. We've got two more to go. We hope to have a complete continuum of senior residential facilities this year, which could include assisted living components and nursing home components. Those are things that we don't have now. We already have rehab care. We have acute medical care. We have a full range of diagnostics, including our new physical therapy center. We have very strong relationships with our community doctors, including doctors right on the campus and the Family Health Institute doctors."

The hospital has also recruited "a pretty substantial group of new specialists to the campus," according to Kelley, "with an orthopedic surgeon, a gastrointestinal, a new cardiologist, a podiatrist, two interns, a pain management group, just in the last six months."

Kelley said before becoming debt-free, the hospital was not able to leverage their greatest asset — the land. Kelley sees the hospital's success as a success for the community. He cited the planned senior housing as a way to make cost effective, affordable housing available for seniors, many of whom own their own housing now.

"These frail elderly seniors will be able to live in a safe environment. The plus to the community is that it frees up housing stock that can then be reused for younger families — families with children, so that our school population will grow with working people who are paying taxes at a time of their lives when they are at the height of their earning power, as opposed to seniors who are living on fixed incomes and may have difficulty affording the taxes, maintenance and upkeep on those houses," said Kelley.

Kelley said he thinks that over a period of a few years, there will be "quite a bit of turn-over of real estate from seniors to younger people, who will put additions on and upgrade their properties, which is good for the tax base, good for carpenters, the landscapers, the electricians, the plumbers, building suppliers. There's a huge positive ripple effect for our community."

The Hospital Independent Senior Housing Complex and new Physical Therapy Center projects continue on schedule. The first phase of the Ellenville Senior Apartments is scheduled for completion in September 2008. The all new, enlarged and state of the art Physical Therapy Center, complete with its own south wing entrance, should open in late March of 2008.

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