ELYRIA — Community Health Partners has scrapped a plan to build a new hospital on Schadden Road in Elyria.

The parent company of Community Regional Medical Center in Lorain, “abandoned” the plan about a year ago, Megan Manahan, vice president of marketing for Community Health Partners, said Thursday.

“We didn’t think it met the needs of the community and our organization’s strategic needs,” she said.

Elyria Mayor Bill Grace said he officially received notification Wednesday that the tentatively named St. Mary’s Community Hospital wasn’t going to happen but that he had been aware that CHP wasn’t going forward with the plan for some time.

“They thought that being closer to Cuyahoga County was a better market position,” he said.

The hospital has been trying to sell parcels of land it purchased in the run-up to announcing the St. Mary’s plan in 2007, both Grace and Manahan said.

CHP also has just paid more than $6 million for about 33 acres of property in Avon near the state Route 611 interchange off Interstate 90.

Manahan said the hospital system is still developing plans for the site, but both doctors and patients have expressed a desire for CHP to have a presence near Avon.

“We’re still finalizing what the plans are for that facility,” Manahan said, adding that what the impact on a nearby physicians’ office and pediatric practice run by CHP has not yet been determined.

She said the Avon area, which already has an EMH Regional Medical Center emergency facility and where the Cleveland Clinic has plans to build a medical office building, is an attractive area because of highway access.

Manahan said the new Avon facility won’t have a negative impact on Community Regional Medical Center, which is located on Kolbe Road.

“We expect the main facility to remain strong,” she said.

The Elyria hospital that CHP was considering had drawn fire from EMH officials, who contended that the Elyria area couldn’t support two hospitals.

CHP will continue to operate its cancer center on Schadden Road and plans to keep much of the property that had been purchased for St. Mary’s to use for future expansion of the cancer center, Manahan said.

Grace said there are already industrial companies interested in the property CHP has put up for sale.
“We had hoped they were going to build the expanded facility,” he said. “But the silver lining is it allows for industrial expansion in that area.”

Grace said he hopes that will eventually mean extending the dead-end Schadden Road to meet Lake Avenue. The best option, he said, would be building an extension off Liberty Court, a small dead-end road near the end of Schadden Road.

That project, which would make the area more accessible, has been under consideration for some time, but the city has never been able to secure the funding to move forward, Grace said.

This isn’t the first time CHP has dropped plans to build facilities. In 2005, the hospital system announced plans to build a facility in North Ridgeville, but that project never left the drawing board.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.