FREDERICK - Longmont United Hospital has scored first in a race to establish a large-scale medical facility in the still-growing Tri-Town area in southwestern Weld County.

LUH purchased a 69-acre parcel near the northwest intersection of Colorado Highway 52 and Weld County Road 11 about a half mile east of Interstate 25. The site is just inside the southern boundary of Frederick, population 8,100.

Frederick and nearby Firestone and Dacono are often referred to as the Tri-Towns, where the annual population growth rate exceeded 15 percent just before the recession kicked in last year.

That growth rate has since slowed to about 3 percent, but the area's proximity to Denver, Longmont and Boulder guarantees it will continue to be an attractive site for local hospital facility planners interested in serving a burgeoning population base.

For LUH - celebrating its 50th anniversary this year - the time was right to plant a flag in the area.

"It's part of our primary service area," said Neil Bertrand, LUH's chief financial officer. "Once the economy starts to kick back in, I think the opportunities will be there. It was a good time to buy."

LUH paid $7.19 million for the undeveloped parcel - $2.39 per square foot, or about $104,000 per acre - to the local Nelson family. The deal closed on Aug. 31.

Bertrand calls the site "an ideal location" given its closeness to I-25, along with the area's future growth prospects. But construction of any medical facilities on the site will have to wait awhile, he noted.

"We need to have more rooftops and development out there before we do anything with the property," he said. "Until then, it will remain in agriculture."

Bertrand said the ultimate goal is to build a full-scale medical facility on the property. "Obviously, the size of the campus provides that opportunity," he said. "Right now, the demographics don't support that. It could be a decade more before that happens, but it all depends on population growth."



Hospital needed

Bertrand said Longmont United already has a medical presence in the Carbon Valley Medical Center in nearby Firestone, about five miles to the north. CVMC, built in 2004, is a joint venture between LUH and the Longmont Clinic. However, the facility is not a hospital with overnight beds. It only sees patients between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and from 9 a.m. till noon on weekends.

Derek Todd, Frederick town administrator, said while CVMC is a valued community resource, its limited hours force local residents to make a long drive to regional hospitals when it is closed.

"Anything that people would need to go to a hospital for would be at least a half hour away," he said. "The interesting thing about our area is we're kind of in a hole with hospitals to the south and west and (Platte Valley Hospital in) Brighton to the east, but really there's nothing in our immediate area. Truly, (a hospital) is a real need in this area."

North Colorado Medical Center in Greeley took a first crack at filling that need last year when it announced it would purchase a 50-acre site about one mile northwest of the LUH site. "The Frederick and surrounding areas are among the fastest growing in the country," said NCMC Inc. chairman Ken Schultz, in an April 2008 announcement of its intent to build a 400-bed medical campus there. "We feel that the time is right to provide convenient, high-quality medical services to the residents in that area."

But NCMC Inc. announced three months later in July 2008 that ongoing economic woes had put the planned purchase on hold. "What we'd like to do is wait till we see an (economic) upturn before pursuing any new medical developments in Weld County," said Banner Health spokesman Bill Byron. Banner has a lease to operate NCMC.

Schultz declined further comment for this story.

Meanwhile, Frederick town administrator Todd said the proposed NCMC site is still on the market. He added that he doesn't know if the area could support two hospital campuses.

"I don't know if two hospitals could exist in such close proximity," he said. "But from an economic perspective, we'd love to see them both come in."

Todd said he hopes LUH can develop a hospital in Frederick in the not-too-distant future.

"In our whole (Tri-Town) area we have close to 40,000 or so people," he said. "There's quite a bit of current need, but the future growth is supposed to be 10 times that over the next 30 to 40 years. Something like this would be wonderful and help foster even more growth."