On Oct. 6, the Indian River Board of County Commissioners will hear from the community about a proposed hospital project at the southeast corner of 66th Avenue and State Road 60. There are plenty of details to work out, but commissioners seem to agree on the need for a third hospital.
Three things need to happen to make the project viable. First, the county must approve a variance allowing a single building to exceed 60,000 square feet on that parcel, for use only as a hospital. This limit was put in place by the county to keep big-box retail stores from getting too big. Should the hospital deal fall through, no other project would be permitted to use the variance.
Second, the county would need to add the word “Hospital” as an approved land use for institutional zoning in the comprehensive plan. For some reason, hospitals aren’t mentioned in the plan.
Third, the county would need to grant a variance for a hospital on this site to erect a five-story building on the 21-acre portion of the property near the intersection that is designated for the main hospital building. With recent COVID ventilation requirements adding to the space between floors, those five stories would exceed the county’s 50-foot height limit for commercial buildings. Again, should the hospital deal fall through, the variance could not be applied to another use.
In 1973, the Board of County Commissioners granted a similar variance to the Indian River Hospital District to build up to 68 feet high. Later on that was extended to 170 feet in case a major expansion was ever needed.
County planning staff and the local team representing the project owner presented the preliminary plan to commissioners at their Sept. 1 meeting. They revealed that 75 acres have been assembled for a new, western medical service corridor and that multiple hospitals are interested in coming to Vero.
The well-developed proposal took some by surprise, seeming to come out of nowhere, but groundwork for a third county hospital has actually been underway for nearly 30 years.
In April 1997, Miami attorney Alan E. Greenfield purchased the first of several parcels that make up the 75-acre property. Thereafter, he acquired all the available land to the east, abutting Indian River State College’s Mueller campus, and a 28-acre strip of land on the west side of 66th Avenue that extends from State Road 60 to 16th Street. Publix was once interested in the location for a grocery distribution hub, but Indian River County said no.
Greenfield died in 2019, but his family stayed focused on the assembled property.
Former county commissioner Tim Zorc met the Greenfields 15 years ago. When the family’s longtime attorney Roy Lustig needed help to make the hospital project happen, he hired Zorc to put together a local team with expertise in real estate development and land use.
On the engineering side, Wesley Mills of Mills, Short and Associates is working on the technical aspects, while attorney Bruce Barkett navigates legal issues. Former county attorney Dylan Reingold, who returned to town in private practice last month, is also working on the project.
Zorc and Reingold spoke for the Greenfield family last week at the county commission meeting, with Zorc saying that all the property owner wants is the same leeway given to Indian River Hospital.
“We’d like to know what the county thinks early on, because if it’s not this site, it’s not any site, because you have the same height issues,” Zorc said, noting that moving forward with pre-development planning will involve “writing a $1 million check.”
Zorc could not reveal to Vero Beach 32963 which hospital systems are interested in the 66th Avenue site, but he described them as “known names in Florida.”
There are three likely suspects, including two that submitted proposals in 2018 to take over Indian River Hospital at the time Cleveland Clinic was chosen to lease the hospital for 75 years.
Prior to 2019, building a new hospital would have required a certificate of need from the State of Florida, but legislators and fast-growing for-profit hospital corporations managed to squelch that regulation. Based upon the supply of hospital beds in the region and a nationally known planning report used by government officials, Indian River County is short 108 hospital beds, according to Zorc.
With property available, multiple hospitals interested and no certificate of need required, the only hurdles remaining are public sentiment and county commission approval – which may be forthcoming.
“What I hear from the consensus is that there is a need for an additional hospital. That’s what it sounds like,” Chairman Deryl Loar said at last week’s meeting.
No commissioners disputed the need for more access to hospital services in the western portion of the county, and at least three of the five seemed initially positive about the project, but as a board they want the public to weigh in sooner rather than later in the process. County legal staff asked for a month to do research.
A new hospital would bring hundreds of permanent healthcare jobs to the county, plus temporary construction and skilled trade jobs for the two or three years it would take to build and finish a five-story 250,000-square-foot medical facility.
A new hospital system or brand would give people unhappy with Cleveland Clinic an alternative place to take their business without driving to Sebastian. It would also bring additional specialist physicians to the county and provide a new place for budding nurses and healthcare technicians to train.
“We think it is a critical location and a great opportunity,” Reingold said. “Additionally, our goal is to have close ties to Indian River State College [which has a large nursing program]. We feel that’s a great win-win, for both having a hospital but also for the college.”
With the new I-95 Oslo interchange and anticipated expansion of the county’s urban services area, the need for a hospital and Emergency Department west of town will grow in the coming decade.
Cleveland Clinic, which is the county’s largest hospital with more than 2,500 employees, has talked about opening a standalone Emergency Department out west someday. However, until a recent financial turnaround under Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Richard Rothman, hospital losses of more than $200 million since 2019 have stymied expansion.
Cleveland Clinic and Rothman declined to comment for this story.
