Waterbury Ambulance, Copley Hospital react to growing costs for new facility projects
August 13, 2023 | By Lisa Scagliotti An architect’s drawing of the proposed ambulance station. Image by Mark Wheeler, EHDanson & Associates
Mounting development costs to build a new ambulance station and medical offices along Route 100 in Waterbury Center have Waterbury Ambulance Service leaders eyeing a new site downtown and Copley Hospital officials asking the state to revise its project approval.
In the case of the ambulance service, construction plans are on hold while the building committee looks into a Demeritt Place site for its “station creation” project.
“It’s a disappointment. We want to be there,” said Maggie Burke, executive director at Waterbury Ambulance Service, of the Rt. 100 location.
Burke attended the July 31 Waterbury Select Board meeting where she shared a project update. “The building project had plans to break ground in June at our site on Rt. 100,” she said. “Bids came back in May at a million [dollars] over what had been projected.”
Most of the cost increase is connected with site work and construction of a fire-suppression system for the new ambulance station given that the site is not on the municipal water system, Burke explained.
Project designers and ambulance leaders doing fundraising since spring 2022 for the project were working with a target price tag of $3.4 million that included purchasing the land for $240,000, site work, and construction. The updated estimate came to $4.6 million, Burke said, with site work and a $600,000 fire protection system accounting for $1.7 million.
“The building committee chose to take a pause and reevaluate the project. This seems like an inappropriate use of donor funds to raise another million dollars just to move dirt and put in a fire suppression system,” Burke said.
To date, the ambulance service had raised approximately $3.2 million of the $3.4 million target. Funds have come from individual and business donors as well as pledges from the communities that Waterbury Ambulance serves – Waterbury, Duxbury, Moretown promised American Rescue Plan Act funds for the station – and some federal funding secured by Vermont’s Congressional delegation.
Meanwhile, Copley executives say the hospital is moving ahead with plans to build on the former Sayah farm site on a hilltop overlooking the busy state highway across from the Zenbarn Farms cannabis dispensary.
The hospital has already purchased 24 acres of the former 74-acre farm. It intended to sell a 5-acre tract to the ambulance service and keep just under 19 acres where it would build new medical offices.
Its Mansfield Orthopaedics clinic located in leased space at 6 North Main Street would move there and expand. The clinic now has four exam rooms in an office just over 3,000 square feet; the new facility would be just under 10,000 square feet with 14 exam rooms and 68 parking spaces, according to project details on file with the Green Mountain Care Board.
But construction costs for that project have also gone up. Copley has filed a request with the Vermont Green Mountain Care Board to amend its approval for the proposed new offices. An Aug. 17, 2022 decision from the state board granted the hospital a certificate of need for the project which was listed as costing just over $5.9 million. The new cost estimate is $7,625,047, reflecting an increase of 29%, according to the hospital’s July 14 request to the state board. A cost change greater than 10% requires board reapproval.
“We’re really committed to the project,” said Joseph Woodin, president and chief executive of Copley Health Systems, in an interview. “We bought the property because of its location.”
Drawings of the proposed Mansfield Orthopaedics offices by Scott + Partners Architecture of Essex Junction. Click to enlarge.
According to the 2022 information, most of the project would be financed through a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan and about $600,000 of the hospital’s working capital.
“We will fundraise and look for other resources,” Woodin said, adding that project officials expected costs to come in higher this year given increases in supply costs and continued workforce shortages since the pandemic.
Copley views the project in the long term, Woodin said, making it necessary to “grin and bear it” as costs creep up now. “We're patient. There’s no need for us to make emotional or irrational decisions,” he said. “We love the location. We love the property. We’re committed to Waterbury.”
The Morrisville hospital is anticipating approval from the state board and is looking to break ground by late August or early September, Woodin said.
WASI looks ahead 50-70 years
Waterbury Ambulance Service is an independent nonprofit organization that operates out of a town-owned facility on Guptil Road adjacent to the Waterbury town highway garages. The location became familiar to many local residents during the pandemic as it was a hub for COVID-19 testing and vaccines.
Cars line up at the Waterbury Ambulance station on Guptil Road for drive-through COVID-19 vaccines in 2022. File photo by Scott Benson
The service, however, long ago outgrew the current 2,400-square-foot, two-bay station, which was built in 1983 by high school students in a construction technology class and was never intended to be used for so long.
“They did a really wonderful job,” Burke said to the Select Board. “We’re really grateful for the space, and we’re really grateful to Waterbury for allowing us to be in that space, but we need to figure out a way to move forward to build for our future and to have a facility that meets the same quality of care that we are providing to our community.”
Covering an area of about 100 square miles, Waterbury Ambulance first responders are on call 24/7 and answer over 800 calls per year. The service recently added a paramedic and its other key functions are performing patient transfers, medical trainings and services like car seat checks. It soon will be one of several agencies involved with long-term flood recovery logistics, Burke added.
The new facility design is for a 6,600 square-foot station with space for on-call staff to sleep, shower, eat and do laundry. It also has four garage bays – needed space particularly since a new ambulance on order is expected to arrive sometime in 2024 and it will not fit in the current station. “It takes about three years to get one,” Burke explained, and the new vehicles are larger than the garage space at the existing station.
The ambulance service began looking for a location for a new station before the COVID-19 pandemic which then put those plans on hold for several years. The goal is to build a facility that the agency could use for the next 50 to 70 years.
The site along Rt. 100 between Guptil Road and the commercial complex where the Cabot cheese and Lake Champlain Chocolates stores are located seemed like a desirable spot, Burke said. Building adjacent to a medical office facility owned by a hospital the ambulance service already works with was another plus. The design team created plans and worked through the local and state permitting processes.
Both Waterbury Ambulance and Copley Hospital have been working with Connor Contracting of Berlin as the general contractor for the two projects. It was after Connor solicited bids for subcontractors that the latest cost estimates were revised, according to ambulance service and hospital sources.
That’s when Waterbury Ambulance leaders decided to take another look around the community.
Waterbury Ambulance Service is considering a vacant lot on Demeritt Place as a possible ambulance station location. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
Burke said the agency now has its design team looking at a lot on Demeritt Place between the Sunoco station and the railroad tracks that’s on municipal water and sewer and whose owner is willing to sell. The parcel is larger than what is needed for the station, Burke said, but it could possibly be subdivided.
Now architects and engineers need to look at the building designed for the Rt. 100 site to see how to adapt it to the new location, she said. Adjustments likely will be needed to raise the building – the Demeritt site is partially in the floodplain.
“We could lift the building up,” Burke said. “We’re looking to see if the site is something that’s going to work for us.”
Burke said the project team knows that switching building sites won’t be without added costs. “We do anticipate our budget will go up, but not $1.7 million,” she said.
Sally Dillon, is president of the ambulance service’s board of trustees, which she said unanimously supports pursuing this new downtown location. “Our main purpose as a board is to be the financial oversight for Waterbury Ambulance. We can't in good conscience put Waterbury Ambulance in financial hardship for the sake of a new building at the Route 100 location,” Dillon said. “We are optimistically hopeful that this new site will be a wise decision for the future of Waterbury Ambulance, the community, and our donors.”
Burke said she has made calls in recent weeks to major donors to the project to share this new information and assure them that their contributions are in the bank and will be well-spent. “We’re just being good stewards of our donors’ money. We want to make sure we’re making the right choices even if we have to pause.”
The hilltop along Rt. 100 is part of the former Sayah farm where Copley Hospital plans to build a new medical office facility. Waterbury Ambulance Service is rethinking its ambulance station plans for the site now that construction costs have increased. On the bottom right is the driveway to Zenbarn Farms cannabis dispensary. Photo by Gordon Miller
Taking time to decide
Copley officials say that pairing the ambulance station alongside the medical offices was attractive given their combined health care focuses. Woodin said he’s still hopeful that the ambulance service might find a way to make the Rt. 100 project work. He said Copley is willing to wait as much as a year before it moves on.
For the hospital, however, the Rt. 100 location is ideal. “There are not a lot of options along the corridor to the interstate,” Woodin said. Copley looked at other commercial locations but they were only for lease and not for sale. Owning nearly 19 acres in Waterbury also gives Copley “more ability to grow the footprint” in the future, he added.
As a nonprofit corporation itself, the hospital will look to community supporters to help with the development, including the ambulance portion, Woodin said. “Maybe a few people would like to help them in some way with the fundraising,” he said. “They do a great job.”
And, should the ambulance service truly decide to build elsewhere, “We will look for another partner” for the Rt. 100 site, Woodin said.