Aurora turns ceremonial first shovel

Oconomowoc Focus, May 17, 2007

Donna Frake, staff writer

Town of Summit - It was a long, hard fight, but Aurora Health Care and Town of Summit officials are not concentrating on the past.

Instead, they are celebrating the future with a ground-breaking ceremony at noon today for the new Aurora Medical Center at the southeast corner of I-94 and Highway 67.

"We're excited to finally be able to get this project started," said Scott Baker, administrator for the Aurora-Wilkinson Medical Clinic.

Construction is expected to begin in June and take about two years to finish.

Once completed, the facility will house the Aurora-Wilkinson Clinic, as well as a 110-bed hospital on its 43-acre site.

The setup will allow patients easier access from doctors' offices to the hospital.

All of the physicians now housed at Wilkinson Clinic will relocate to the new facility, Baker said.

The Aurora Women's Clinic, which recently opened on Summit Avenue, will also relocate to the campus, and that space will be converted to primary-care offices, he said. "Everyone knows the history that went on; we're just excited to be moving on," Baker said.

The City of Oconomowoc was embroiled in a lawsuit with Aurora after a change in zoning of the hospital's initial site by the Common Council left Aurora unable to build in the city. The issue stretched on for five years until January 2007, when revisions to a border agreement, land acquisition and a developer's agreement were approved and put an end to litigation, paving the way for the project to proceed.

"It's finally coming to fruition. It was not a matter of 'if,' it was a matter of 'when,' because we need that," said Summit Town Chairman Leonard Susa.

"It's healthcare competition, not a monopoly or something like that. The hospital that will be built here is the perfect example of the type of development we need here in the Town of Summit and in western Waukesha County," Susa said.

Susa said the new hospital is expected to provide nearly 700 new jobs - "very good new jobs." Susa said that influx would help solidify the strong housing market in the area.

"It's good news all around," he added.