A proposed expansion of Aspen Valley Hospital includes more outpatient and emergency-room services, private rooms for recovering patients, a spruced-up entrance and lobby, new surgery rooms and a parking garage.
Without including the parking garage, the expansion would essentially triple the size of the existing 75,000-square-foot medical facility. With the parking garage, the hospital quadruples.
Aspen City Council got its first look at the proposal in a meeting on Monday, the first of at least three hearings on the expansion before the council will be asked to grant a conceptual approval.
Hospital representatives said much of the expansion is needed to meet existing demand and to increase the efficiency of health care in Aspen. The expansion would provide for more doctors’ offices on site, allowing doctors to handle appointments and deal with emergencies in the same building. This is difficult now since most doctors have their offices off site.
The new facility would also provide patients with more privacy and dignity, said AVH CEO David Ressler, noting that patients have to share rooms with beds separated by a curtain during the high season. The current hospital layout is cramped, Ressler also noted.
Council members expressed some skepticism over the proposal.
Noting that the hospital believes it captures about 70 percent of the midvalley market, Mayor Mick Ireland questioned if that was a level the hospital should be concerned with keeping up. Growth is exploding in the El Jebel area, and perhaps it shouldn’t be AVH’s worry to accommodate that, Ireland said.
Ireland also said he is concerned by the expansion’s traffic impacts on the roundabout.
“The roundabout is the Achilles’ heel,” he said.
The hospital needs to consider its needs 50 years down the road, so it doesn’t come back in 25 seeking to move to a new and bigger site, Councilman Jack Johnson said.
Ireland and Councilwoman Jackie Kasabach were also dismayed that the expansion plans don’t include a detox facility.
The current plan doesn’t include any on-site employee housing, although hospital officials said they are looking into partnering with the city on the Burlingame project. The hospital is also looking into expanding the Beaumont, an employee housing complex it owns in east Aspen, Ressler said.
Monday’s meeting was meant to be a project overview, while a second meeting in two weeks will go over details of affordable housing, drainage, infrastructure improvements and traffic. A third hearing, scheduled for Feb. 9, would handle any outstanding issues. Should the project receive conceptual approval, it would have to go back through the Planning and Zoning Commission for a final review, then back to the council for final approval.
The expansion would be conducted in four phases. The first phase is under way and includes the new obstetrics ward, where babies are born. The second phase would see a two-story building built around the east and north sides of the existing building, with most of the space going to doctors’ offices and outpatient care facilities. This phase also includes the parking garage. The third phase would add a two-story expansion to the west of the existing building with expanded emergency room and operating room space. The fourth and final phase would primarily be for the construction of a new entrance, drop-off and lobby area.
Ressler noted that the proposal does not include any major new departments or initiatives, but instead tries to improve what the hospital already does.
curtis@aspendailynews.com