ST. HELENA – St. Helena Hospital is consolidating its medical offices into a larger outpatient services location to be opened just south of St. Helena this fall.
In a relatively large deal for upvalley commercial property, the hospital leased the entire 6,435-square-foot first floor of the largest building at a fairly new three-building office development in the 800 block of St. Helena Highway.
"We currently lease office space for several of our hospital-owned practices in different locations in St. Helena and recently expanded the number of practices we have," said spokesman Jeff Davis.
[caption id="attachment_21693" align="alignright" width="360" caption="St. Helena Hospital plans to consolidate medical offices in St. Helena into the first floor of this building this fall. (CBCBV photo)"][/caption]
Three of those offices are an obstetrics and gynecology clinic at 1530 Railroad Ave., St. Helena Physical Therapy at 1030 Main St. and the Women's Diagnostic Center of St. Helena Hospital at 1299 Pine St.
"The new leased space at Inglewood Village Business Park will help support our recent and future growth and provide a convenient, centralized location where residents can see several types of physicians," he said.
Currently, the hospital is recruiting medical staff in orthopedics, OB/GYN and family practice, according to Mr. Davis. The particular practices and services to go into the new medical offices haven't been finalized, according to Mr. Davis.
The 151-bed hospital has been enjoying a growth spurt in medical staff. Last year 21 physicians joined the staff, bringing the complement to 150 doctors and 1,023 employees at year-end after cost-cutting in nonmedical staff earlier in 2009.
The Martin-O’Neil Cancer Center opened in 12,500 square feet of the new Johnson Pavilion on the main hillside campus north of St. Helena in November with a $2.5 million Varian linear accelerator for highly targeted radiation treatment. The center now is affiliated with Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at U.C. San Francisco Medical Center.
In January, the similarly sized Trinchero Surgery Center opened in the Johnson Pavilion and has a new magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scanning device.
Also new to the medical center is the Coon Joint Replacement Institute, which offers partial knee replacement via a minimally invasive robotics-assisted system.
The shift of St. Helena offices to the new outpatient facility won't include the Well Now Showcase at 1200 Main St. or administrative and information technology offices at 1572 Railroad Ave., according to Mr. Davis.
The showcase opened in a 1,900-square-foot storefront in mid-March to appeal to tourists visiting Napa Valley with general health information and details on hospital services, such as the 61-bed Center for Behavioral Health in Vallejo and 14-room residential wellness center on the main campus.
Roseville-based Adventist Health, which owns the hospital and 16 other acute-care facilities in four Western states, asked the city of St. Helena in September for a 15 percent rent reduction in conjunction with a one-year renewal of a lease of 4,336 square feet in city-owned 1572 Railroad "due to the current economic downturn," according to a city report to the City Council.
The report said, "Their request was inadvertently overlooked at the time."
At its May 11 meeting, the City Council voted 5-0 to deny the request, because lowering the $1.57-a-square-foot lease rate would reduce revenue for the cash-strapped city by $12,245 a year, according to documents.
The owners of the building that will house the hospital's consolidated outpatient services in St. Helena, Inglewood Village Partners LLC, courted the hospital to make such a move before the first building was built in 2006, according to Coldwell Banker Commercial Brokers of the Valley's Jeff Feeney, who has been marketing the property for more than a decade.
Mr. Feeney and Mike Moffett, also of the same firm, represented both sides in the deal.
Originally, the hospital had been considering construction of a medical office building on the south edge of the city a few blocks north of Inglewood Village.
Mr. Davis said the hospital currently has no plans for such a building in St. Helena. Also there are no current plans for consolidating medical offices elsewhere in Napa Valley, such as the OB/GYN clinic in north Napa.
David Colombo Architect of Santa Rosa is designing the interior of the new offices. A contractor for the improvements hasn't been selected.
