It took five years of patience, but now it looks like patients will soon be served by an Aurora Hospital in western Waukesha.
The project, on its death bed twice in that period, was resuscitated Tuesday by a shock sparked by pending litigation against the first group that tried to bury it -- the Oconomowoc Common Council. The council voted for a compromise in order to avoid the risk of losing a pricy lawsuit.
When the Waukesha County Board last year voted down a plan to rezone a Pabst Farms parcel to build the hospital -- despite support from the town of Summit -- Aurora reopened a suit it had postponed against the city of Oconomowoc, and also decided to sue the Waukesha County Board. Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Mark Gempeler ruled in March that the county acted within its authority in denying the land use change. But Aurora had better luck against Oconomowoc, when Waukesha County Circuit Judge James R. Kieffer reversed a previous decision. Kieffer said the city did not follow its own rules and procedures when it voted against the rezoning even before it had an application from Aurora.
With Kieffer's ruling in hand, Aurora announced it would sue the city for $59 million in building delays and other costs. Since the project was first introduced, the original $85 million price tag has more than doubled.
With the announcement of the suit, closed-door negotiations between the city and Aurora soon entered a critical stage. With little advance warning, a new prescription came to the council Tuesday. It voted for an agreement that manages to avoid the second governmental entity that tried to lay the hospital to rest, the county board, while killing the Aurora lawsuit.
The board, which has final approval over all town zoning, was able to quash the hospital last year by voting against rezoning the portion of the Pabst Farms complex along Interstate 94 and Highway 67 that was approved by the Summit Town Board.
In order to avoid litigation, the city agreed to extend its state-granted extraterritorial zoning powers over the nearby parcel to rezone it to allow for the hospital. That action does not require a second opinion from the county, which had its own staff recommend the project.
Aurora was predictably pleased in finally winning its costly five-year battle.
But Aurora spokesman Jeff Squire said Wednesday, "It will still be a number of months until any work starts, as rezoning and other requirements have to be followed in the process."
As for the time it will take to build the hospital and ancillary developments once all the approvals are in place, Squire said, "it should take anywhere from 18 months to 24 months."
Oconomowoc Mayor Maury Sullivan said the deal was made because the lawsuit was too large a risk for the city's approximately 13,000 taxpayers to take on.
But he also pointed out at the meeting that the city will greatly benefit from the Pabst Farms development because the city owns a portion of the property and that value will now increase greatly. It also allows the originally proposed Oconomowoc site to be used for a proposed one million square-foot shopping mall that was announced earlier this summer.
"The first motivator here was to preserve the zoning" to allow for commercial use at the city's site," Sullivan said. "And then the potential became more real that we had some weaknesses in our case and we didn't want to have citizens face a $59 million liability."
Summit Town Board Chairman Leonard Susa, who fought off opposition from Oconomowoc only to lose at the county level, was also pleased with that the project once again has a strong pulse. He said the hospital's clinic will generate at least $26 million in property taxes and spark other development that will only grow that total.
"I am elated that this is finally over," Susa said. "The town is 121 years old but this will be seen as one of its most defining moments."
But the real birth pangs for the new $166 million, 88-bed hospital will be felt elsewhere.
ProHealth Care, which operates the Waukesha Memorial Hospital and the Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital, fought the new project tenaciously, spending not only capital resources but political capital as well. Exerting its enormous political influence as the operator of the area's only long-standing hospitals, ProHealth Care worked to kill the project at the city and county levels.
Also feeling the pain of a new hospital will be local businesses, said Bill Nantell, who led a group of small businesses that opposed the Aurora hospital, called Concerned Businesses for Responsible Health Care.
He said building the new hospital within just a few miles of the Oconomowoc facility would needlessly drive up medical costs through unneeded duplications of services.
"The (Oconomowoc) city council cut this deal in the back room and Mayor Maury Sullivan wouldn't even meet with the business community on this topic," said Nantell, who owns a Waukesha business.
Nantell said the hospital will cost $160 million to build, or $2 million per bed, and cost millions each year to operate. He maintained those costs will be passed on to businesses and consumers through higher costs for insurance and medical procedures. At the same time, the Oconomowoc hospital's patient levels will go down "by about 35 percent," Nantell predicted. "The costs of that will also be passed along" to the consumer, he believes.
Aurora's hospital construction firm has already submitted an application to the city for a special use permit to begin development of the facility, just three miles from the site of the existing Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital.
After the expensive, five-year fight, ProHealth Care spokesperson Sandra Peterson added only the post script that "ProHealth Care will continue, as we have for almost a century, providing quality care at the most reasonable cost and we're confident we will remain the provider of choice in the communities we serve."
The project, on its death bed twice in that period, was resuscitated Tuesday by a shock sparked by pending litigation against the first group that tried to bury it -- the Oconomowoc Common Council. The council voted for a compromise in order to avoid the risk of losing a pricy lawsuit.
When the Waukesha County Board last year voted down a plan to rezone a Pabst Farms parcel to build the hospital -- despite support from the town of Summit -- Aurora reopened a suit it had postponed against the city of Oconomowoc, and also decided to sue the Waukesha County Board. Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Mark Gempeler ruled in March that the county acted within its authority in denying the land use change. But Aurora had better luck against Oconomowoc, when Waukesha County Circuit Judge James R. Kieffer reversed a previous decision. Kieffer said the city did not follow its own rules and procedures when it voted against the rezoning even before it had an application from Aurora.
With Kieffer's ruling in hand, Aurora announced it would sue the city for $59 million in building delays and other costs. Since the project was first introduced, the original $85 million price tag has more than doubled.
With the announcement of the suit, closed-door negotiations between the city and Aurora soon entered a critical stage. With little advance warning, a new prescription came to the council Tuesday. It voted for an agreement that manages to avoid the second governmental entity that tried to lay the hospital to rest, the county board, while killing the Aurora lawsuit.
The board, which has final approval over all town zoning, was able to quash the hospital last year by voting against rezoning the portion of the Pabst Farms complex along Interstate 94 and Highway 67 that was approved by the Summit Town Board.
In order to avoid litigation, the city agreed to extend its state-granted extraterritorial zoning powers over the nearby parcel to rezone it to allow for the hospital. That action does not require a second opinion from the county, which had its own staff recommend the project.
Aurora was predictably pleased in finally winning its costly five-year battle.
But Aurora spokesman Jeff Squire said Wednesday, "It will still be a number of months until any work starts, as rezoning and other requirements have to be followed in the process."
As for the time it will take to build the hospital and ancillary developments once all the approvals are in place, Squire said, "it should take anywhere from 18 months to 24 months."
Oconomowoc Mayor Maury Sullivan said the deal was made because the lawsuit was too large a risk for the city's approximately 13,000 taxpayers to take on.
But he also pointed out at the meeting that the city will greatly benefit from the Pabst Farms development because the city owns a portion of the property and that value will now increase greatly. It also allows the originally proposed Oconomowoc site to be used for a proposed one million square-foot shopping mall that was announced earlier this summer.
"The first motivator here was to preserve the zoning" to allow for commercial use at the city's site," Sullivan said. "And then the potential became more real that we had some weaknesses in our case and we didn't want to have citizens face a $59 million liability."
Summit Town Board Chairman Leonard Susa, who fought off opposition from Oconomowoc only to lose at the county level, was also pleased with that the project once again has a strong pulse. He said the hospital's clinic will generate at least $26 million in property taxes and spark other development that will only grow that total.
"I am elated that this is finally over," Susa said. "The town is 121 years old but this will be seen as one of its most defining moments."
But the real birth pangs for the new $166 million, 88-bed hospital will be felt elsewhere.
ProHealth Care, which operates the Waukesha Memorial Hospital and the Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital, fought the new project tenaciously, spending not only capital resources but political capital as well. Exerting its enormous political influence as the operator of the area's only long-standing hospitals, ProHealth Care worked to kill the project at the city and county levels.
Also feeling the pain of a new hospital will be local businesses, said Bill Nantell, who led a group of small businesses that opposed the Aurora hospital, called Concerned Businesses for Responsible Health Care.
He said building the new hospital within just a few miles of the Oconomowoc facility would needlessly drive up medical costs through unneeded duplications of services.
"The (Oconomowoc) city council cut this deal in the back room and Mayor Maury Sullivan wouldn't even meet with the business community on this topic," said Nantell, who owns a Waukesha business.
Nantell said the hospital will cost $160 million to build, or $2 million per bed, and cost millions each year to operate. He maintained those costs will be passed on to businesses and consumers through higher costs for insurance and medical procedures. At the same time, the Oconomowoc hospital's patient levels will go down "by about 35 percent," Nantell predicted. "The costs of that will also be passed along" to the consumer, he believes.
Aurora's hospital construction firm has already submitted an application to the city for a special use permit to begin development of the facility, just three miles from the site of the existing Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital.
After the expensive, five-year fight, ProHealth Care spokesperson Sandra Peterson added only the post script that "ProHealth Care will continue, as we have for almost a century, providing quality care at the most reasonable cost and we're confident we will remain the provider of choice in the communities we serve."
