Metro Parkway expansion on fast track
Hospital will pay to expedite road widening
BY JEFF CULL jcull@florida-weekly.com

A 1.2-mile stretch of Metro Parkway - across from Lee Memorial Health System's new Gulf Coast Hospital in south Fort Myers - will be widened to six lanes years ahead of schedule, thanks to a loan from a hospital partner.

Lee Healthcare Resources, the non-profit support organization to Lee Memorial, will pay the estimated $15 million to improve the state highway and Florida will repay the loan in 2012, when the project was to be built.

State engineers had planned to improve the state road between Daniels Parkway and Six Mile Cypress Parkway but then

Lee Memorial is expecting increased traffic when it opens its new 349-bed Metro campus in spring, 2009.

"Improving the road is critical," board attorney Jim Humphrey told the hospital's board at a regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday, April 12.

Board members unanimously approved the deal.

Johnny Limbaugh, Southwest Area office manager for the Florida Department of Transportation, said the state is acquiring the right-ofway now and expects to bid the project next summer. It will take about two years after that to build, Limbaugh said, leaving the road in construction turmoil for at least a year after Lee Memorial moves its patients from the Southwest Regional Medical Center on Evans Avenue to the new hospital.

Nathan

"It's disappointing that it will take this long," said system President Jim Nathan.

"Still, that's better than 2012 or 2013," Humphrey said.

With nearly $700 million in debt following the acquisition of Southwest Regional Medical Center from Hospital Corporation of America in August, Lee Memorial couldn't take on any new obligations. That's why it turned to Lee Healthcare.

Nathan said taking on additional debt, even the relatively small amount of $15 million, could reduce the hospital's bond rating.

Fortunately, Nathan said, the hospital's bond rating has remained stable, even after the acquisition of HCA. Lee Memorial has an "A" rating from both Moody's and Standard and Poor's.

Lee Memorial is one of only two public hospitals in Florida that gets no tax money. The other is Bay Medical Center, a small Panama City hospital. ¦