Saratoga Hospital is moving forward with a proposed expansion after initial approval from the Saratoga Springs City Council.
Saratoga Hospital’s Planned Unit Development has been amended six times since being established in 1987. At Tuesday’s city council meeting, representatives of the hospital pitched the newest addition—a 60,000 square foot medical facility on Myrtle Street.
Hospital president Jill VanKuren said the Center for Successful Aging would meet the needs of locals.
“Our community is aging. We have an influx of older people coming into Saratoga, coming into our community, and one of the things that they’re looking for is fantastic healthcare. They’re also looking to age in place. And when I talk to our community members what I hear most often is how difficult it is to access healthcare in general. Appointments are on different days, schedules are not aligned, there’s difficulty in communication regarding their plans of care,” said VanKuren.
VanKuren said the new facility would alter how the hospital does business by consolidating the services people need to age in place.
“Under the same roof, close to the hospital so that the existing services, imaging, lab services, can be accessed more readily. Our physicians and Aps can go back and forth between the hospital and the ambulatory campus more seamlessly. And the functionality of the building will support same day appointments, collaborative care with multispecialty providers. Everything from pharmacists, to nutritionists, behavioral health specialists, primary care physicians, geriatricians, neurologists, movement disorder scientists. All in one place,” said VanKuren.
In 2022 Saratoga Springs residents successfully stopped a proposed 80,000-square foot facility from going in. It would have extended into 20 acres of land that had been zoned for residential use before a change by the city council that was ultimately appealed. VanKuren says this proposal is different.
“We are literally adjacent from the hospital in our—I call it the 59-D loop. The existing building is about 10,000-square feet. Our proposal would bring that building down and replace it with a 60,000-square foot building in its place using the same resources that are currently there. The same lighting, the same road, the same infrastructure, the same parking. We wouldn’t be expanding into adjacent property, we would stay within our existing PUD,” said VanKuren.
Alice Smith was one of the residents who opposed the recent expansion. She’s remaining on guard about the latest proposal.
“We won’t fight it if they do it within their own PUD because it’s already zoned for that. Our main concern is that after that they will want to, again, try to build on the Morgan Street lot because the new building is not going to house 400 doctors, we are realistic about that, and we know it. So, basically we’re looking at the future, and we want the city council to plan carefully and look to the future,” said Smith.
An attorney representing the hospital said staffing numbers for the new facility would stay approximately in line with the previous 45 staff members per 10,000 square feet of building.
Smith says some questions remain unanswered.
“Exactly how many medical offices are you going to put in there, and how many additional parking places are you going to have in there? They have told us that the building is going to be the same size as the building on 1 West Ave, which is two floors. They’re going to have three floors in their new building, so we’re assuming they’re going to have more than 45 doctors there but they haven’t said a number,” said Smith.
According to the proposal, an additional 250 parking spaces as well as two above-ground parking lots will be constructed to accommodate a higher number of visits to the West Side complex, tucked between several city neighborhoods.
Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi spoke in favor of the hospital’s effort to communicate with nearby residents, and hoped they would continue to do so.
“Many of us have aging parents and in-laws and we’re all here trying to do this. So, we appreciate—I know Saratoga County itself has an aging population and so this is the most perfect thing to have here in our community, I think it’s going to be really worthwhile for everybody. But we just want to make sure that the neighborhood is also not shortchanged in the process,” said Sanghvi.
The city council unanimously found merit in the proposal and sent it to the planning board for further approval.
Saratoga Hospital representatives say they will hold another meeting with neighbors Monday.
