Exempla St. Joseph Hospital is talking about building a new hospital on land that will be vacated when The Children’s Hospital moves to the Fitzsimons campus in Aurora.
Cherokee Denver LLC was selected last fall as the master developer for Children’s 14-acre downtown campus, which is between Downing and Emerson streets between East 20th and East 18th avenues. The company has been in discussions with various parties, including hospitals, residential developers and retailers, said Ferd Belz, president of the development firm.
“There has been a lot of interest, but nothing definitive is in place,” Belz said. “We’re closer to having a contract in place with a residential developer than we are to anything else.”
It’s unclear whether St. Joseph would buy the entire site or just a piece of it. Hospital officials declined to comment. Currently, St. Joseph’s main tenant is Kaiser Permanente.
St. Joseph reportedly wants to build a new facility so it can attract private-practice physicians to the hospital, said Dr. Charles Brantigan. He is chairman of the Hospital District Urban Design Forum, a group that includes registered neighborhood organizations, representatives from the city and nearby medical institutions St. Joseph, Children’s Hospital and Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center.
The hospital was built in the 1960s and consists of two-bed rooms, which don’t sell in today’s market, Brantigan said.
“They haven’t kept up the infrastructure in a way that it will compete in some of the new hospitals,” he said. “And even if they make a push to attract private practitioners, there really isn’t any space to put them.
“St. Joe’s new CEO (Bob Minkin) wants to build a replacement hospital at the Children’s Hospital site. He has rather grandiose plans about what he wants to build.” The new Children’s Hospital is scheduled to open this fall.
A new facility is necessary if St. Joseph is to achieve its goal of becoming a major referral center, where complex care is provided and other hospitals send their problem cases, Brantigan said.
A new nearby office building at 20th and Downing would be ideal for a surgical-specialty hospital, Brantigan said. In 2005, The Children’s Hospital announced it would build a 12-bed pediatric emergency center in partnership with St. Joseph. The facility will be open by September.
Residents in the neighborhood wanted to see the site developed with housing, retail and offices.
“We were really optimistic about a mixed-use area to the west of Ogden,” said James Heath, a board member of the Old San Rafael Neighborhood Organization. “In a lot of ways, the hospitals have not been very good neighbors. They turn their back on the neighborhood and wall us off.”
But a new hospital is preferable to a high-density apartment project, which Cherokee also is considering, Heath said.
“At this point we’re saying maybe it’s better that St. Joe’s buys the whole thing,” Heath said.
Founded in 1873 by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kan., St. Joseph is Denver’s oldest private hospital. It has 565 licensed beds and 1,268 physicians.
It has tried to position itself as a leading cardiology center and is the busiest childbirth center in Colorado, with more than 4,817 births a year.
The hospital has a contract with Kaiser Permanente to provide care for the HMO’s members in greater Denver.
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it incorrectly described the status of The Children’s Hospital at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The facility will be open by September.
