March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

100-bed clinic approved by Planning Board

Bangor’s newest medical facility, Acadia Hospital, a 100-bed clinic, needs a few more permits, but hospital officials said Monday that they hope to break ground April 15 and open in the late summer of 1992.

The Planning Board approved the site plan that calls for renovating and adding to the former Taylor Hospital on Stillwater Avenue.

The tax-exempt facility, a subsidiary of Eastern Maine Healthcare which is the parent of Eastern Maine Medical Center, will cost about $12 million and employ about 250 people with an annual payroll of $5.6 million.

Approval did not come without a hitch for the half dozen hospital officials who attended the meeting.

“When this was first proposed,” said board member Joel Rudom, “I recall a gentleman saying that this was going to be a profit-making hospital; that it would pay taxes.

“Now I see that it’s going to be a gimme, with no tax receipts for the city,” he said.

Dennis King, president of Acadia and vice president of Eastern Maine Healthcare, said, “It originally was going to be for-profit. But for a variety of reasons we decided to go tax-exempt.”

As first proposed, the hospital was to be a joint venture. But about a year ago, the players changed. Since then, city officials said they understood that Acadia would be developed as a tax-exempt institution.

Under the plans presented Monday, the 40,000-square-foot existing building would be renovated. Additionally, the plans call for 56,054 square feet of new construction, a three-story building with a one-story gallery linking the new and existing building.

Designed for acute, short-term pyschiatric care, Acadia would house 80 beds for pyschiatric patients and 20 beds for chemically dependent patients.

At a previous meeting of the Planning Board neighbors expressed fears and suspicions over having patients with mental illnesses roaming the grounds near softball diamonds.

“Landscaping will complement the new buildings and provide a pleasant screen from Stillwater Avenue,” the hospital stated in a press release distributed at the meeting.

At the request of neighbors, the hospital will build a fence down one side of its property to keep all-terrain vehicles and snowmobile operators from speeding across the property and down back of nearby residential properties.

The owner of Pleasant Park Manor, an adjacent apartment complex, Mark Eremita, worried about the traffic generated by the new hospital and its impact on already busy Stillwater Avenue.

“In terms of traffic, we’ve found that the volume of traffic will remain satisfactory,” said William Ryan, an engineer representing the hospital, “given the length of patients’ stays, the number of visitors per patient, and lack of emergency medical traffic.”


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