You read it here first: Madison is getting a new hospital!
O.K., Madison Community Hospital exec Tammy Miller is very careful to say her facility is "seeking support for financing," not actually announcing the project for which one of my sources says blueprints have already been drawn up. Miller also is not asking for the city to throw money into the project right away; she's just asking for letters of support from the Madison City Commission and Lake County Commission.
It's a good thing the hospital isn't seeking city money, since the private Madison Country Club already has dibs on a quarter million taxpayer dollars for its clubhouse expansion.
Mayor Gene Hexom has already drafted a letter of support for the commission's approval at its regular Monday meeting:
Note the mayor's comment about the "landlocked" position of the hospital and the need to provide access for "18,000 citizens." Land speculators, you'd better join Bob Fodness in getting property along the south side of town so you can be part of the building boom that the hospital is likely to lead along the bypass.
Miller insists that the hospital is not going corporate:
Madison Community Hospital is a nonprofit, independent, critical access hospital. Physician practices are also independent and not affiliated with any corporate system.
"It is the intent of the hospital and its physicians to remain independent," Miller said, indicating that maintaining independence is valuable because it allows for local decision-making. An independent hospital can deliver care based on the unique needs of the community, and it allows for patient choice in referral needs, she said [Elisa Sand, "Hospital to Seek City, County Support," Madison Daily Leader, 2011.12.02].
I'm all about keeping local ownership and control... not to mention avoiding hooking up to some larger network that will lard our medical bills with the extra costs of hiring hotel managers. But I wonder if our city leaders have considered one possible benefit of joining one of South Dakota's big hospital networks: tapping the philanthropic wealth of T. Denny Sanford. One problem with Madison's economic and cultural development that I've heard from various observers is that Madison doesn't have the same class of successful entrepreneurs reinvesting big donations in community projects. We don't have Kurtenbachs and Fishbacks like Brookings.
So what if we got Sanford? Right off the bat, the Sanford empire could provide financing to make more hospital expansion happen than Madison would know what to do with. With a Sanford facility in town, Madison could also start tapping those generous T. Denny donations as he buys indulgences for his sins of usury. (The furious tapping you hear is various Madison leaders sneding Sanford e-mails assuring him that the Madville Times does not reflect the official view of the City of Madison.) Sure, we'd have to rename Egan Avenue "Sanford Street," install a statue, and surrender local control over our hospital, but that would be a small price to pay for the possibility of juicing our stagnant local economy with some Sanford cash, right?
That's a building block. A fancy golf course club house is not.
The Madison Country Club request brought to light the somewhat limited resources the city has available. What can Madison do to make a building project happen for the Hospital/Clinic? How would that affect any Egan Avenue revival for retail expansion?
I'd look to see if the hospital could be placed downtown, perhaps along SE 2nd Street to the west of the Depot, or along the east side the new East River Development between Harth and Washington, and then build up. The last thing we should look towards is developing further south, as the center of the community continues to decline.
I fear that won't happen, Chris. Look at the language from Miller and Hexom. It's all about expansion and access. You and I can see the possibility of making that happen in that core area, but they won't make the effort to see that. They will seek a wide open field where they can build everything from scratch, build a really big parking lot, and have direct highway access.
I can sympathize with the access argument: Is there any better spot around town than the south edge of town to build a helipad and to dispatch ambulances directly onto the highway?