BCH plans multistory medical building near Foothills campus

BOULDER — Boulder Community Health plans to build a 75,000-square-foot, three- to four-story medical building in the Riverbend business park east of its Foothills Hospital campus in east Boulder.

Hospital officials had a pre-application meeting Thursday with city planners, starting the process that in addition to gaining building approval, will require a rezoning of the area and a height-restriction modification. Over the past several years, the hospital has been buying property in Riverbend.

Frank Bruno, president of the Boulder Community Health Foundation, said Friday that the building would be used to house its behavioral health and in-patient rehabilitation divisions, along with an electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT unit. ECT, often referred to as shock treatment, is a standard psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in patients to provide relief from psychiatric illnesses. The building also will house administrative offices and a parking structure with a yet-to-be determined number of spaces.

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The building site, east of 48th Street, opposite the entrance to the Foothills hospital and south of Ball Aerospace & Technologies’ Fisher Integration Facility, needs to be rezoned because patients will be staying overnight, Bruno said.

The behavioral health and in-patient rehab units currently are in a building at the hospital’s eight-acre campus at Broadway and Balsam Avenue in west Boulder, which is up for sale. Real estate firm CBRE, representing the hospital, is combing through proposals from prospective buyers. The city of Boulder has expressed an interest in acquiring the property.

Bruno said construction of the new building at Foothills is not contingent on the sale of the Broadway campus but proceeds of that sale would be used to pay for the new construction. Cost of the project has not been determined, Bruno said.