Aurora reveals Summit hospital plans

Milwaukee Business Journal, January 2, 2007

Aurora Health Care today unveiled plans for the 110-room, $189-million Aurora Medical Center in the town of Summit, its long-sought hospital for western Waukesha County that the health system hopes to begin building this spring.

Plans for the new medical center in the Pabst Farms development have been submitted to the town of Summit. The town's Plan Commission and Town Board are scheduled to review the plans in the weeks ahead.
The 53-acre medical center is expected to open in the summer of 2009, assuming timely approvals.

The $189 million pricetag is more than double the $88 million Aurora had originally proposed to spend on the hospital in 2000, and more than $23 million more than it estimated the cost would be in a court filing two years ago.

With 110 patient beds, the hospital will be 25 percent larger than the 88-bed facility initially proposed, which became the center of a five-year legal and political battle between Aurora and local governments.

The medical center will be built at the southeast corner of Interstate 94 and Highway 67. It will occupy part of a 156-acre triangle of land in the Town of Summit that the Pabst Farms developers have designated for health-care related development.

The medical center will incorporate a 593,000-square-foot hospital and a 180,000-square-foot medical office building. The office building will be the new home for the physicians and staff of Aurora Wilkinson Medical Clinic, which has outgrown its space in Oconomowoc. Aurora will explore new uses for the clinic building at 915 Summit Ave. in Oconomowoc.

The services now available at the new Aurora Wilkinson Women's Center at 1284 Summit Ave. in Oconomowoc also will move to the new medical center when it opens, along with the Vince Lombardi Cancer Clinic that will open soon next door to the women's center. The Wilkinson Clinic locations in other communities will continue to operate.

Total initial employment at the medical center is estimated at 950 full- and part-time employees, including the Wilkinson Clinic employees who will move from the Oconomowoc locations.