Healthcare: Advocate BroMenn Medical Center wants to build $24M center
By Mary Ann Ford for the Pantagraph
NORMAL — Advocate BroMenn Medical Center plans to build a $24 million, 90,000-square-foot facility on a portion of the 111-acre Empire Business Park on Empire Street east of Airport Road, and a Bloomington business owner is considering constructing a community aquatic center there as well.
The Normal City Council on Monday will consider expanding the local enterprise zone to the business park.
Advocate BroMenn spokesman Eric Alvin said the medical center’s new facility “would be a combination of hospital services and leased space for physician practices.”
All outpatient therapy services — physical, occupational and speech — would move from Advocate BroMenn’s medical office building to the new site, and Healthpoint urgent care center would relocate from its current location at Towanda and College avenues, Alvin said.
In addition, there would be a small outpatient lab, a women’s radiology department for mammograms and bone density tests, and space for physicians to lease.
Before the project can proceed, Alvin said the medical center must receive a certificate of need through the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board. He expects the application to be filed within the next few weeks.
“Ideally we’d like to break ground in the fall,” he said, but it depends on when the certificate of need is approved.
Last month, Advocate BroMenn broke ground for a $53 million, 144,000-square-foot addition at its main campus in Normal. About 79,000 square feet will replace the hospital’s mother-baby and critical-care units, currently housed in the 1967 portion of the medical center.
While Alvin said the already tax-exempt Advocate BroMenn would not benefit from the enterprise zone’s tax benefits, the medical center still supports the idea of expanding the zone. Qualifying building materials on enterprise zone projects are exempt from state sales tax.
“We do support it because it will bring faster development of the area, which is a benefit to the economy,” he said.
One project that could be coming to the site and would qualify for the enterprise zone tax exemption is a community aquatic center being considered by Rob Knight, owner of Rob Knight’s Swim America, 510 E. Washington St., Bloomington.
“Any savings in this economy is attractive to developers and companies like ours,” he said. “Aquatic centers are expensive to build.”
Knight said his proposal for an 18,000-square-foot aquatic wellness and fitness center at the Empire Business Park is very preliminary. As envisioned it would accommodate swimming lessons, aquatic therapy, water exercise classes, lifeguard classes and scuba lessons.
He hopes to have “strategic partners” such as physicians and other health care professionals, the American Red Cross, and community swim clubs who also could use the facility.
Knight currently has no plans to close his East Washington Street site.
Expanding the enterprise zone to include the east-side acreage is being recommended by the Economic Development Council of the Bloomington-Normal. It must be approved by Normal and Bloomington city councils and the McLean County Board.
Bloomington is expected to consider it June 14 and the County Board on June 22.
The enterprise zone has been expanded in the past to uptown Normal, the Horizon Wind Energy sites east of Bloomington and the now-defunct Wildwood Industries building in north Normal.
