Aurora close to revealing hospital plans

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 1, 2007

By Amy Rinard

Summit - Aurora Health Care is expected to unveil as soon as this week its revised plans for a hospital in western Waukesha County and release its claim on land now proposed for an upscale shopping mall in Oconomowoc.

The moves come as the final pieces of a complicated and intricately timed legal agreement fall into place, paving the way for development of the hospital and the 1 million-square-foot Pabst Farms Towne Centre, which General Growth Properties has proposed.

"The memorandum of understanding is complex, and certain things had to precede other things," Oconomowoc Mayor Maury Sullivan said Friday, referring to the legal agreement.

"I think the parties are working their way through that and things are moving forward."

Aurora spokesman Jeff Squire declined to say exactly when modified plans for the hospital would be released. But officials in Summit said they expected Aurora to file plans with the town in time for the Plan Commission to give them an initial review in mid-January.

"We're very, very close," Squire said.

"It's an enormous amount of work; we've taken a fresh look at everything, and we're at a whole new level of detail than we were before."

The hospital cost could be higher than the $166 million figure, including the land purchase and equipment, revealed in court documents filed in Aurora's lawsuit against the City of Oconomowoc. When the hospital was first announced, Aurora officials said the 88-bed hospital would cost $85 million.

The agreement, which the city, Summit, Aurora and Pabst Farms developers signed in August, settled the 5-year-old lawsuit. Aurora sued the city after the Common Council rezoned the Oconomowoc site so that a hospital could not be built there.

Aurora then turned its attention to land in Summit, at the southeast corner of I-94 and Highway 67 just across the interstate from its original site, and proposed to construct a hospital there. That plan came to a halt when the County Board refused to approve the Town Board's request that the land be rezoned to allow a hospital.

In the meantime, in a preliminary decision, a judge ruled in Aurora's favor in its lawsuit, and General Growth proposed its posh shopping mall - a project that city officials endorsed - on land that included Aurora's building site.

That sent all parties to the negotiating table, and the result was an 11-page memorandum of understanding. In its central provision, Aurora agreed to drop its lawsuit if the city used its broad zoning powers to rezone the town site and the hospital got built there.

Aurora also agreed to release its claim on its original site in the city, known as Parcel 5, so the mall project could proceed there.

"When all of it comes together, we release Parcel 5," Squire said. "My understanding is everyone is doing what they need to do to make that happen."

The council has completed the rezoning of the town site, and General Growth's plan to build a shopping center is moving through the city review process, with two public hearings scheduled in January.

Other provisions of the agreement call for Pabst Farms developers to build a fire station for town and city use and for the city to annex some town land and establish a permanent border with Summit.