Our cover story this week, the opening of the new Ellenville Senior Apartments on the Ellenville Regional Hospital (ERH) campus, has gotten us thinking about progress. It's no secret that ERH is the "little hospital that could." It went from where it was ready to close its doors and deprive the community of a place to heal and mend, to the constantly growing success story that has no end of projects in sight. Drop in and pay a visit to President and CEO Steve Kelley, and he'll show you schematics and blueprints for the next ERH project — you can't visit the hospital without finding a new project in the works.

Why is that? Why is it that, in a time of immense economic and financial slowdown, and in an area that's been hit hard by financial crisis years before the rest of the nation caught up, we have a staple of the community that not only refuses to lay down and die, but prospers and continues to expand? It's been a strange experience to drive up and down Route 209, with the abandoned and hollowed-out businesses that crowd the side of the road, and then be confronted with the construction processes for the Ellenville Senior Apartments at ERH. How can a community that's contracting be home to a business or institution that won't stop growing?

Chief among the reasons for this is capital. Yes — a hospital will be the recipient of more financial assistance from the state's government than your average pizza joint or bait-shop…that's no secret. We have State Senator John Bonacic to thank for much of the funding that the hospital has received in the years that it's reinvented itself. But that can't be everything — the fact of the matter is that the hospital is in the black, and has remained so. If receiving state funds was the only secret to its success, it wouldn't be expanding like it is, it would simply remain stationary, taking its donations and funds as a means to stay afloat and open. No, there's more at work here.

The brain trust behind the hospital's growth have identified a key market in the community: our seniors need physical therapy and affordable housing, hence the Senior Apartments and this summer's newly opened Physical Therapy wing. These are people who don't have a lot of money, but can and will part with it in order to take advantage of what the hospital provides.

Now, putting retail spaces and restaurants on the same level as a hospital is not quite fair, but ERH's new additions are just that: additions. They're not necessary, yet they're here, and they seem to be thriving.

What's really important is identifying a sector of the community that wants something, and is willing to spend some money to get it. Yes, jobs are scarce, and times are tough — but seniors living on a fixed, and oftentimes low, income are flocking to the hospital's new services in droves, keeping that business in the black. What about other businesses that can cater to tomorrow's seniors today?

This is not as in-depth a financial analysis as we'd like to offer or delve into…but anyone can see that the recipe for the community's success might not be as elusive as we'd all like to believe.

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