Copley faces growing costs for Waterbury offices

“It’s a disappointment. We want to be there,” said Maggie Burke, executive director at Waterbury Ambulance Service, of the Route 100 location.

Burke attended a July Waterbury Selectboard meeting where she shared a project update. “The building project had plans to break ground in June at our site on Route 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 said.

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 sitework 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 it needs. Funds have come from individual and business donors as well as pledges from the communities that Waterbury Ambulance serves — Waterbury, Duxbury and 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 St. 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 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 $7.6 million, reflecting an increase of 29 percent, according to the hospital’s July 14 request to the state board. A cost change greater than 10 percent requires board reapproval.

“We’re really committed to the project,” Joseph Woodin, president and chief executive of Copley Health Systems, said in an interview. “We bought the property because of its location.”

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.

Ambulance service

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 residents during the pandemic as it was a hub for COVID-19 testing and vaccines.

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.

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 said, and the new vehicles are larger than the garage space at the existing station.

The site along Route 100 between Guptil Road and the Cabot cheese complex 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 in the community.

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.

Sally Dillon, president of the ambulance service’s board of trustees, said the board 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.”

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 Route 100 project work. He said Copley is willing to wait as much as a year before it moves on.

For the hospital, however, the location is ideal.

“There are not a lot of options along the corridor to the interstate,” Woodin said.

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.”

This story first appeared in the Waterbury Roundabout (waterburyroundabout.org).