Hospital facility set to break ground in February

The ground breaking of a new UNC Hospitals facility in Hillsborough is planned to begin in February after the settlement of a major roadblock.

Construction of the new branch’s physicians’ offices will precede that of the hospital portion of the facility, which won’t begin until as late as 2014 as a result of the settlement of an appeal, said Margaret Hauth, town of Hillsborough planning director.

Concerned that UNC was encroaching on its territory by relocating 68 beds to the Hillsborough location, Alamance Regional Medical Center brought the hospital’s construction plans to a halt with its 2009 appeal against UNC’s state-approved Certificate of Need.

The certificate verifies that the area needs UNC’s additional services.

The appeal was resolved in July with UNC’s concession to delay receiving patients at the new facility until 2015, a year later than originally planned.

The $228 million facility is set to be built off Interstate 40 Exit 261 in the Waterstone development, across the street from Durham Technical Community College.

“We’re just moving existing licenses to decompress our main campus,” said Ray Lafrenaye, vice president of facilities and plant development at UNC Hospitals.

“I don’t know what (Alamance’s) motivation was.”

Alamance, a non-profit hospital with 218 beds, primarily serves patients from Burlington and Graham.

“(The appeal) was settled amicably on both sides,” said Alamance spokeswoman Tracey Grayzer. “It was purely to protect business interests of the hospital.

“We’ve always had a good relationship with UNC Hospitals.”

Because the hospital can’t receive patients for five years, UNC is currently designing the physicians’ office building that will open in the fall of 2012, Lafrenaye said.

When this design is complete, UNC will request building permits from the town of Hillsborough in order to begin construction in February.

The idea of building the satellite clinic was first discussed in March 2009.

“My understanding is that they want more single-patient rooms on campus,” Hauth said.

“So they’ll move beds up here so they can renovate some of the rooms and convert them to one bedroom.”

Lafrenaye said the only other challenges he could foresee for the new branch were economic ones.

“Right now it’s a good environment for bidding,” he said.

“But since it can only be opened in 2015, we don’t know what that economic environment is going to look like.”

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.