Though St. Luke’s University Health Network completed its
newest hospital nearly four years ago on its 500-acre property in Bethlehem
Township, the organization is eyeing future expansion, including a potential
medical school.
The news comes on the heels of St. Luke’s touting the end
of a $15 million road improvement and expansion project for Freemansburg Avenue
outside its newest hospital – The St. Luke’s Anderson Campus in Bethlehem
Township. The project is divided into three parts, with an estimated total cost
of about $35 million not including design costs, officials said.
St. Luke’s financed most of the first part of the
project.
The organization hosted the event at the campus on
Thursday, where Richard Anderson, St. Luke’s president and CEO, said the
property has potential for the location of a medical school, particularly since
120 St. Luke’s medical students will be becoming physicians. St. Luke’s started
a clinical campus for Temple University students in 2006 at the network’s
headquarters in Fountain Hill.
“I could see that school coming out to this site in five
years,” Anderson said. “It could be conceivable that the township could have a
medical school here in the future. You’ll see some pretty remarkable
developments. For us at St. Luke’s, the best is yet to come, and we will not
just be successful, but we will thrive.”
PHASE ONE DONE
For the Freemansburg Avenue project, St. Luke’s partnered
with Bethlehem Township, the state Department of Transportation and the Lehigh
Valley Economic Development Corp.
The first part of the expansion of Freemansburg Avenue
near the Route 33 corridor covered 1.25 miles of the road, said Bernie Spirk,
general superintendent for Iron Hill Construction Management Co. of Bethlehem.
Iron Hill hired Lehigh Valley Site Contractors Inc. of Forks Township, a
division of the H&K Group family of companies, to do the work, while Iron
Hill oversaw construction.
“One of the problems was we always had to have traffic
flow,” Spirk said. “That was one of the difficulties.”
The company completely reconstructed the existing road,
including installation of new water lines, sanitary sewers and almost three
miles of storm sewer lines. At the intersection with Route 33, the number of
lanes was increased from six to 10, he said. This section focused on widening
the road west of the Freemansburg bridge to Farmersville Road.
Other improvements included new sidewalks, curbing and
traffic lights with the newest technology. Also, the company built a new
intersection with traffic lights for the nearby Madison Farms mixed-use
development. And on the Anderson Campus, Iron Hill built University Drive, a
road to support future growth of St. Luke’s.
The Pidcock Co. of Salisbury Township was the engineer
that designed the project for St. Luke’s, Spirk said. The company also is used
by Bethlehem Township, he added.
Several speakers Thursday discussed how the first part of
the road improvement and expansion project has advanced economic growth. By
upgrading infrastructure, the project enhances access to health care services
that St. Luke’s provides the community, officials said.
Anderson said the project represents a cooperative effort
funded largely by St. Luke’s in combination with a contribution from KRE Group,
the real estate developer of the Madison Farms project. Financing for the
second part of the project, now underway, is from St. Luke’s and state and
federal funds.
STRONG PARTNERSHIP
The project follows a partnership stretching more than a
decade between St. Luke’s and Bethlehem Township, which included acquisition of
the land to build a hospital, medical office building and cancer center on the
Anderson campus.
“It was my job to advise the board of directors for St.
Luke’s,” said Bob Martin, senior vice president for network development at St.
Luke’s.
While the network had been eyeing Route 248 and Route 33
for a hospital location, once this section of nearby Interstate 78 opened,
officials saw a prime property with great access.
At the time, Martin and others saw the need to improve
the infrastructure surrounding the site of the future hospital, even though
traffic was not at the level it is today.
“It was very important to me to improve the road to the
maximum level possible,” Martin said. “Nobody wanted to be the developer who
had to invest $7 million to rebuild the overpass.”
The planning of the hospital took about seven years. The
turning point that accelerated the process came when Bethlehem Township got its
engineer involved, he added.
Two years after the hospital opened, it underwent
expansions of its emergency department and completed the hospital’s fourth
floor medical-surgical unit to accommodate patient volume, which is now at 108
beds, said Charles Saunders, M.D., chairman of the board of trustees for St.
Luke’s.
The hospital has admitted more than 5,000 people in 2015
and treated almost 41,000 patients in the emergency room for 2015, Saunders
said. So far, the campus added 350 permanent jobs, he said.
CONTRIBUTING TO GROWTH
“This thriving health care campus required infrastructure
improvements to Freemansburg Avenue,” Saunders said. “Here in Bethlehem
Township, this growth will continue for years to come. This expansion has
contributed to the economic growth of the area.”
The road improvement project also bodes well for
ancillary commercial and residential development, said Martin Zawarski,
chairman of the board of supervisors for Bethlehem Township.
Lehigh Valley Industrial Park VI on nearby Emrick
Boulevard soon will be built out, the Madison Farms development is underway,
which includes 800 residential units and additional retail sites, plus multiple
office buildings are expected with the Mill Creek Corporate Center, a corporate
office park planned by PennCap Properties on land owned by PennDOT behind the
Park & Ride lot on William Penn Highway.
Other commercial development proposals are in the works
for Bethlehem Township, pointing to the need for road improvements to William
Penn Highway, the next exit north on Route 33.
Today, more than 15,000 vehicles travel Freemansburg
Avenue daily, said Michael Rebert, district executive for PennDOT engineering
district 5-0. Another major road development, the completion of the southern
extension of Route 33 with Interstate 78 about a dozen years ago, also prompted
a need for the expansion of Freemansburg Avenue, he said.
THE NEXT TWO PHASES
The rebuilding and ramp widening of the Freemansburg
bridge began in May and should be finished in December 2016. This project cost $13.1
million – $7 million financed by St. Luke’s with the remainder state and
federal funding.
“The lion’s share of the work will be done once the
bridge is completed,” Martin said.
The third part of the project will begin in December 2016
and should finish in December 2017 and involves the east part of the road,
widening Freemansburg Avenue from the bridge to Kingsview Avenue, with $6
million financed by St. Luke’s.
Source: LVB
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