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DiMeo Wants To "Hook" Hospital Board

Read the emails! This one highlighted below is from page 161 of Utica's MVHS #Emailgate files. For more on... Steve.

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631

From: Anthony Brindisi

Sent: Friday, July 10, 2015 2:50 PM

To: Steven DiMeo

Cc: Picente, Anthony

Subject: Re: MVHS - meeting with Hammes on downtown

Thanks for the update. If that is the direction they think is best to go to secure a downtown site, I could try and seek some funding for the program. I'll be out of town starting Monday but available through email. What does the hospital propose happen at this point?

Anthony

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 7:02 AM,

Steven DiMeo wrote:

Tony/Anthony

We met with Hammes yesterday on downtown site. Besides myself, Lisa Nagle of Elan Planning, Paul Romano and Steve Eckler of OBG and person from MVHA (head of facilities). They have been in town the past few days looking at all 12 of the sites.

Our meeting was strictly on downtown site option. I was very pleased with Hammes and really liked them! They are out of Milwaukee and the have a good urban planning/development background. I did not sense that they were negative at all with a downtown option. They have been involved with major urban redevelopment projects in big cities so they understand what we are attempting to accomplish. We discussed the traffic circulation. They totally concur that the road access to downtown is not an isusue. We had overlays of the new arterial design and Oriskany Blvd 5/5S design.

They spent a lot time over past few days walking around downtown and other areas. In fact they were in Gerbers the night before and we were there following meeting with City Council on harbor GEIS. They do see opportunity in downtown so I am not as concerned about them having a suburban bias. They had seen the draff MOU that I gave Scott back in early May so they understood the funding program to help create a downtown site option that is cost neutral.

They do think that one can probably rebuild on the St. Lukes site so I think that is the alternative option.

They think that if you factor everything into the equation, that St. Lukes might be cheaper but that is just a guess.

They think that a downtown site would likely be 10-12 stories high to best optimize the site. They did not look at that as a negative but indicated that we would have a dominant skyline in downtown We noted that board asked question about whether it cost more to be more vertical vs. horizontal. They said that the cost to go up does add to the program but the St. Lukes option would have similar concerns since there are site constraints that would force them to be more vertical.

632

I think they will be able to tell the hospital that downtown option has potential but that what really is needed is an investment of funding to build a program to test the downtown site option, which I believe is the next step anyway. The Hammes team was very focused on getting this right and I believe they are very intrigued with downtown as being an interesting option but that it requires some solid planning and programming.

I think the missing part of getting a decision from the board is to develop the propgram and that requires some money.

I am not sure what the hospital has in resources to fund a program.

The MOU that I prepared had a blank fill in the line about providing some funding (possibly county) to support some preliminary engineering and design so that this can get serious consideration.

I would recommend that the County (take it out of funds that are setaside for a downtown Utica project out of gaming proceeds) to support this.

I think that $250,000 in County funds with a match of some sorts by hospital to earmark $500,000 for the project would be a solid start in forcing the hospital to invest in a planning effort on the downtown option.

I firmly believe that once they get into this that the focus will be on downtown.

Hammes sees the potential and understands the complications with downtown. They believe you need to go to the next step to build the program if downtown is going to be viable. I believe the hopsital’s issues is that they do not know how to move forward and cannot access the $300 M without a plan. We need to get the plan and program in place.

Once they are on the track to build the program I think they will be hooked since they will commit to a timeline to make this happen.

Steve

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We know "the hospital was pulled into downtown", the above email (and others) make it very clear. Plus the link just offered, confirms it in hospital CEO Perra's own words!

You can help, please join us on Facebook #NoHospitalDowntown. Also consider adding your voice to Hundreds of People Saying, "No Hospital Downtown". Get to know BUD, that's the future of the Columbia Lafayette Neighborhood!

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No Studies, No Reports, thus we remain #NoHospitalDowntown