Real Estate & Construction  May 18, 2016

Economic impact touted at groundbreaking for UCHealth’s new Longmont hospital

LONGMONT — UCHealth’s Long’s Peak Hospital will employ 250 to 300 people when it opens next year, but it’s economic impact on Longmont figures to be much greater than that, Longmont Economic Development Partnership CEO Jessica Erickson told a crowd gathered for a ceremonial groundbreaking on Wednesday morning.

That impact includes not only 500 construction jobs created while the $189 million facility is built, but also an estimated 500 jobs created in Longmont indirectly through other local businesses expanding or new businesses opening as a result of the additional dollars being pumped into the community due to the hospital’s presence.

“Restaurants, shops, other health-care-related businesses will grow up around this,” Longmont Mayor Dennis Coombs told the crowd.

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UCHealth officials hope to have the 53-bed, 212,300-square-foot hospital at the northwest corner of County Line Road and Colorado Highway 119 open by late spring next year, giving the city its second hospital.

Erickson said a hospital typically has significantly higher economic-impact multipliers associated with it than other types of commercial development. She cited statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis indicating that every dollar spent by a hospital supports $2.30-worth of additional business activity within the local community.

The new jobs at the hospital are expected to pay average annual wages of nearly $70,000, Erickson said, about 120 percent of the Boulder County average.

“We like the direct job creation and the direct spend as well, but it’s much more than that when you’re looking at hospital development,” Erickson said.

Wednesday’s ceremony was held amidst a flurry of construction. While Wednesday’s ceremony provided photo opportunities and celebration, work has been underway since December when crews began rerouting the Oligarchy Ditch that runs through the site to have it ready in time for spring runoff.

Work on the hospital facility itself began in April. Longs Peak Hospital CEO Dan Robinson said crews have started pouring the foundation, and he expects to see steel rising in the next two weeks.

“And then I think people will start to see the magnitude of what we’re trying to develop,” he said.

Robinson was previously CEO for UCHealth’s Colorado Health Medical Group, the employed physicians arm of UCHealth.

In addition to the hospital facility being built now, UCHealth also has a medical office facility planned for the site, though no specific plans on a timeline for that facility have been determined, Robinson said. He said UCHealth also is looking at renovations of Longmont Clinic, which UCHealth acquired in 2014. But he said there’s no plans for expanding the footprint of the clinic, which sits across the street from Longmont’s current hospital, Longmont United Hospital.

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