Two hospital groups see Riverview/Apollo Beach as their frontier for new facilities, and one may start building next year. Locals are eager to see them come.
By JAY CRIDLIN
Published October 8, 2004
RIVERVIEW - When they moved to Riverview from Massachusetts nine years ago, Robert and Lorraine Pinette made the rounds of Hillsborough County hospitals.
Robert suffered from an array of illnesses, from diabetes to high blood pressure. The Pinettes drove down the road to South Bay Hospital in Sun City Center, then back up to Tampa General Hospital. Pinette finally succumbed to cancer last Christmas morning at the James A. Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa.
It would have been easier, Lorriane Pinette said, if they could have gotten quality health care closer to home.
"To have someplace close is wonderful," Pinette said. "It would have been more convenient."
Pinette's wish may become reality.
Two health care providers are clearing the way to build hospitals in the Riverview-Apollo Beach area, one of the fastest-growing parts of Hillsborough County. Construction on one facility could begin as early as 2005.
Last month, Nashville-based HCA Healthcare Inc., which operates South Bay Hospital, asked the county to rezone about 39 acres at the intersection of Old Big Bend Road and Simmons Road to make way for a proposed 250-bed, 360,000-square-foot hospital and 300,000 square feet of medical office space by 2012. Construction could begin by March.
HCA's request comes just weeks after the Hillsborough County Commission approved a request by St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa to rezone 55 acres near the same intersection to allow for a 150-bed, 400,000-square-foot hospital and 220,000 square feet of medical office space.
HCA and St. Joseph's are planning hospitals that would sit almost directly across from one another. Officials from both organizations say they're moving ahead with their plans regardless of what their competitor has in store.
The market is ripe for a hospital. If HCA builds first, it will have the chance to lay first claim to the health care needs of a rapidly growing community.
"We've been watching the demographics for years and years," said South Bay Hospital spokesman Ron Proulx, speaking for HCA. "It's no secret the type of growth that's suddenly been initiated. We've watched that develop, and we've considered various options, and feel the best solution is a new facility."
Between 1990 and 2000, the population of Riverview, Bloomingdale, FishHawk, Boyette, Gibsonton, Progress Village and Apollo Beach jumped from 34,121 to 58,438 - a 71 percent increase. That's more than three times the rate of growth elsewhere in unincorporated Hillsborough; it's about twice as high as Brandon, which grew 34 percent, and Ruskin, which grew 37 percent.
At that rate, the greater Riverview area could have about 100,000 residents by 2010, the year HCA plans to launch the final phase of its Riverview project.
"In this county, the big area to expand is in south county," said Dr. Jim Davison, an emergency room physician at South Bay Hospital who ran for the Hillsborough County Commission in 2002 and this year. "That's where the vast majority of the growth is going to occur over the next 20 years. It's a no-brainer for St. Joe's and a no-brainer for HCA."
Residents, too, have long recognized a need for a medical treatment facility. Pinette said most people wouldn't care whether the hospital is built by HCA or St. Joseph's, so long as it's built.
"For people to go from here to Brandon - it's not that it's far, mileage-wise, but traffic-wise, it's getting horrendous," said Pinette, a former president of the community group Voice of Summerfield. "If it's going to increase in the next two years, you need something."
St. Joseph's has expected this for decades. Anticipating a population explosion in south Hillsborough, the company purchased about 57 acres near Big Bend and Simmons Loop during the 1970s with plans to someday expand there.
But St. Joseph's officials have no immediate plans to develop the land.
"Regardless of what other health care providers are doing, we base our decisions on community needs, and we have made no changes at this point," said Amy Lovett, a spokeswoman for BayCare Health Network, to which St. Joseph's Hospital belongs.
Meanwhile, HCA is moving ahead on its complex, the first phase of which may include office space and outpatient, diagnostic, cancer treatment and ambulatory surgery facilities.
Although there is no design yet, and the commission will not consider the plan until Jan. 25, officials say they could break ground in the next few months.
"If things go the way we'd like to see them go, in 2005, we'd start phase one, which is a medical office building," Proulx said.
The two existing local hospitals, Brandon Regional and South Bay, are unlikely to lose too many patients over the next decade.
Brandon Regional is in the midst of the largest expansion in its history, and opened part of a five-story, $120-million patient care tower in December. That facility will house the hospital's burgeoning cardiac program and up to 170 beds.
Both Proulx and Davison said it would be difficult to envision South Bay ever closing, given Sun City Center's need for local emergency care.
Whichever hospital builds first, the real winners will be Riverview residents, Davison said.
"There'll be some competition, which will mean lower prices over the long term and more services," said Davison, a member of South Bay's medical executive committee. "Most people are going to benefit greatly. Their quality of life is going to increase."
