St. Luke’s proposes office building
By GREG MOORE and KEVIN WISER
Express Staff Writers
With construction of the St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center well
underway and on schedule for completion in December, hospital officials are now seeking to
construct a 40,000-square-foot medical office building and to modify their commitments
related to highway improvements adjacent to the hospital.
The requests will be made in the form of two applications that will be
heard by the Blaine County Planning and Zoning Commission on Thursday, March 9.
One application seeks a conditional-use permit to construct a
40,000-square-foot medical office building to be located on the St. Luke’s property
just to the north of the hospital.
According to the P&Z agenda, the building will consist of a basement
and two floors above ground level. The first-floor footprint of the proposed structure is
19,577 square feet.
The purpose of the office building, the agenda states, is to provide
office space to physicians at the medical center.
St. Luke’s spokeswoman Hillary Furlong said the proposed building has
been on a master plan for the site ever since St. Luke’s went before the P&Z
seeking a conditional-use permit to build the hospital, which it obtained in January 1999.
In its second application, the hospital seeks to amend that permit’s
conditions regarding Highway 75. Under the permit, the hospital cannot open until a
five-lane highway is completed past the site. St. Luke’s is requesting that that
condition be deleted since the Idaho Transportation Department has postponed its project
to widen a section of the highway south of the hospital.
Furlong said St. Luke’s is requesting that the permit be amended to
allow it to open after it constructs southbound entrance and exit turn lanes and realigns
Broadway Run, which is across the highway but does not now line up with the hospital
entrance.
The P&Z will consider the applications at 6:30 p.m., at the old Blaine
County Courthouse in Hailey.
Furlong said St. Luke’s should have a target date for opening the new
hospital in about a month.
"We’re starting to lay out the specifics on how we’re going
to transition the services and equipment," Furlong said.
