Hospital eyes ideas for growth

PROVO — Utah Valley Regional Medical Center needs elbow room, and hospital managers are looking at interesting options that would change the face of Provo.

Intermountain Healthcare is buying up nearby homes — and hungrily looking across the street at Provo High School to fill short-term needs at UVRMC.

UVRMC is growing rapidly in a landlocked location in the middle of population boom. By 2020, the hospital projects 661,320 residents in Utah County, up from 453,976 residents in 2005.

Parking is already a problem without additional expansion. Some employees are grumbling about parking miles away and catching hospital shuttles to work while the hospital builds a new outpatient clinic on the northeast corner of the block.

The construction of a parking terrace is evidence of expansion.

"They recognize they are in an urban setting and need to go up," Provo City Council chairman George Stewart said. "They need parking to do that."

IHC recently purchased an auto parts store that could make room for an outpatient procedures building and physician office space, said Bryant Larsen, the hospital's director of community relations.

UVRMC needs more parking space and is looking south of 940 North, its southern boundary. In the past 15 years, IHC has purchased 13 of 17 homes in the block to the south, down to 880 North.

"We're negotiating on the remaining four," Larsen said.

The city Planning Commission would have to rezone the two rows of houses before IHC could pave over the land. Larsen said that IHC prefers parking lots to terraces because they are cheaper to build.

"2020 is kind of our planning window," Larsen said.

Neighbors also prefer a parking lot to a parking garage, so IHC is looking east, too, specifically Fox Field at Provo High, the wide-open space between the hospital and high school, Larsen said. Fox Field is now home to high school soccer and softball games.

However, Provo School District officials, in informal talks with management at the nonprofit hospital group, said it will cost millions for the field.

"We have had some casual conversations, and our reply to (IHC) is Fox Field is always part of Provo High," Provo School District business manager Kerry Smith said. "You can't take it without all of Provo (High School), and the only way they'd ever consider (selling the high school is) they'd have to pay enough money to rebuild the high school on our land out west."

The district owns property near Utah Lake where a new high school could be built. High schools cost about $40 million to build.