CR Reaches Tentative Agreement With Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District to Buy Property in Garberville

Announcement from College of the Redwoods:

During the November 1st Board of Trustees meeting, College of the Redwoods reached a tentative agreement to sell its Garberville site to the Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District for $1.1 million.  Included in the tentative agreement were the conditions that the healthcare district provide a $50,000 nonrefundable deposit and pay all closing costs.

The Garberville property was purchased by the College of the Redwoods in 2010.  Since then, the District has invested over $1.8 million in the property–$208,136 to acquire the site and $1,596,174 in costs associated with improving the site.

Recently, CR was approached by the Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District, with an interest in purchasing the site to construct a hospital.  The proposed sale price is less than the amount the District has paid for and has invested in the site.  Enrollment and fiscal data for the site indicates that there has been and continues to be poor enrollment at the site, resulting in annual operating losses that have a persistent negative impact on CR’s district budget.

The sale of the property would provide a benefit to both districts: the elimination of the on-going budget deficit for College of the Redwoods regarding the site, while making available to the Healthcare District real property that can be used for medical services, including a new hospital.  CR has the option to lease back space for classes and will be reinvesting the $1.1 million in remodeling their two dorms on the Eureka main campus.

Tom Ross, President of CR’s Board of Trustees, said “we saw this as an opportunity to support the Southern Humboldt community with selling to their healthcare system, ensure classes can still be delivered in Southern Humboldt based on demand, and be able to reinvest the funds in improving the living experience for our dorm residents.”

With the tentative agreement in place, the District must now hold a public hearing to consider public comment.  Thereafter, the Board may sell the real property to the Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District by a unanimous vote of the Board

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Marling McReynolds
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Marling McReynolds
7 years ago

If the hospital district buys this property, what happens to the Redwood Playhouse which is part of the building????

Schools Rock
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Schools Rock
7 years ago

Even more important, what happens to the Garberville Community School, which is in this building too! ???

Karen
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Karen
7 years ago

Redwood Playhouse remains, part of the Hospital’s deal, part of community health.

Richard Finch
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Richard Finch
7 years ago

The community was certainly sold a bill of goods when CR purchased this property from the local school district for far less than its appraised value with the promise that the new campus would become a “full service” campus offering degree and certificate programs and an eventual enrollment of hundreds of students. Anyone who seriously believed this vision was, to put it simply, out of touch with reality.

When CR claims they spent 1.1 million dollars remodeling the site, I would take that figure with a grain of salt. CR permanently employees numerous carpenters, electricians, painters, and so forth. These are contract employees who are paid regardless of the location of the work they are doing. Having worked for several years at the CR main campus, I can tell you that these people do little of their work during the academic year and most during academic breaks, mostly the summer break, when few students are on campus. Were the time and wages of these employees when they were performing such tasks on the Garberville campus included in thus figure of 1.1 million dollars?

Just-me
Guest
Just-me
7 years ago

What a great investment. Spend upto $1.8 million and sell for $1.1 million. CR is great at flipping properties. Good waste of our tax monies.

Mogtx
Guest
7 years ago

I remember when that building was owned by the Southern Humboldt Unified School District back in the early seventies but now it’s going to be something totally different .my best friends johnny coxs mom worked there Marilyn cox rest his soul.

The Donald
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The Donald
7 years ago

1.1 million $ tear down?
Great negotiating skills there.

Taurus Balzhoff
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Taurus Balzhoff
7 years ago

This whole plan is poorly conceived at best. SHCHD can not afford this property on it’s best day, and it will need a considerable amount of work to be used as planned. The condition and operation of the current facility in Garberville is extremely tenuous. The current administration and officers at Jerold Phelps appear to be incompetent and possibly corrupt, and the board members comprise a clueless and misguided lot. When I first heard Harry Jasper talking about “building a new hospital” I just about burst out laughing.
I am disgusted by the condition of this organization, continue to be amazed by the lack of interest the public has in it, and honestly feel that the whole organization should be disbanded. It would be in the best interests of the community to operate a SNF and run a small clinic with XRAY, limited lab and mammography/women’s health, if providers could be found, but the publicly funded model is flawed and unsustainable. Having a facility with this much bad-will in the community will prove impossible.
Going forward, if SHCHD is to survive, we will require level and sensible and honest people capable of management, not the good old boys and girls and clubby do-nothing board that we see now. Any facility that mistreats it’s employees, turns over 60% of the staff every year and rewards abusive behavior in it’s administrators will obtain poor results. To continue with the current gang of knuckleheads and with this ridiculous plan: we should put it up for vote.

Jon
Guest
Jon
7 years ago

The hospital has four years left until a seismic retrofit is mandatory. Building new is less expensive. Sprowl creek road is a great location.

Only love
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Only love
7 years ago
Reply to  Jon

Agreed!

Taurus Balzhoff
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Taurus Balzhoff
7 years ago
Reply to  Jon

Interested to read that the employees of JPH are contributing a part of their salary to the “Build a new Hospital fund. I hope they know that their jobs are probably temporary, and they would be well advised to buy a pig in a poke instead.

SHCHD operates a Clinic/SNF/Urgent Care with limited Lab/XRAY/PT. It is not a hospital.

Having a hospital would require: Physicians, Nurses, Medical Technologists: PERMANENT STAFF! JPH has not been able to recruit, retain or maintain staffing for years, and it controls costs by firing people without cause.

A hospital is not just a building, and ordinarily it will need the support of the community, and will require an approach towards serving the needs of the public. The operators of SHCHD have repeatedly and consistently failed to do anything like this, and I have no confidence that the administrators currently employed, or the board members as elected, have any idea of what to do next. This project could break SHCHD permanently, and perhaps it should.

!!!
Guest
!!!
7 years ago

They dont charge urgent care prices

Only love
Guest
Only love
7 years ago

Taurus B, The healthcare district came back to my attention recently when I was given the opportunity to sit in on their annual strategic planning meeting as an interested community member. I have to disagree with you on some of your opinions. For one, the hospital has a SNF, a clinic, a physical therapist, a pediatrician, all those services you mention and more, but with our community growing, the hospital needs to grow as well and the current board is very well aware of that. This current group does in no way resemble the “gang of knuckleheads” as you call them. What “good old boys and girls”? These are some of the brightest most hard-working people in our community, all with different talents to bring to the table. From what I’ve seen, they’re excellent strategic planners, engaged in maintaining and improving the hospital step by step. It’s actually exciting to me to see how far they’ve come since I worked as the district’s part-time development coordinator in the early 90’s. The new CEO, Matt Rees, is very knowledgable in hospital administration with a proven track record, and he’s here to stay! He loves living in this area. We’re so lucky to have him. You seem like you have an ax to grind, but trust me, this is practically a new hospital in how it’s run now from top to bottom now. No workplace is perfect, but having worked for the district back then, when rural hospitals all over our country were (and still are) floundering and even folding due to the costs of new regulations, retro-fitting, handicap accessibility upgrades, diagnostic equipment upgrades, professional staffing costs, etc, and healthcare costs in general, the healthcare district has come a long way. There are still Plenty of challenges. The US has the most expensive healthcare system in the world and small hospitals struggle to keep up. And yes, you’re right, the community needs to get much more involved if we want to see our community thrive. That our clinics and hospital are not Just “still standing”, but actually filling the healthcare needs of so many in our community, is the result of the very hard work and careful decision-making by a number of people. It’s due to people working hard including the new CEO, Matt Rees, his admin staff, current seasoned board members, the excellent pro consultants they’ve hired, and the dedicated professional medical staff, that the hospital is back and improving all the time. I’m not an adequate hospital historian or all that has been done, but I know that name-calling and trash-talking when you obviously are nowhere near up-to-date on what they are accomplishing, is off-mark. We can talk to the board members. We can tell them our concerns. We can ask them questions. No, they’re not swimming in a pool of money, but they’ve improved finances significantly and among other important changes, are able to pay medical professionals better than in the past. And with solid plans in place to acquire funding over the next 5 to 10 years, including a small tax that will come up for vote in the spring of 2017, grants and other fundraising strategies, this project is a definite go. Think of what our community would be like without a hospital; without emergency care to stabilize a heart attack patient, or an acute gall baldder attack, before transfer and even to repair broken bones; and to treat accident injuries before they turn fatal. Without a hospital, we’d be in deep. And peripherally, think of how low our property values would go down without a hospital in this growing area. It is OUR healthcare district. OUR health and safety are at stake and so WE are stakeholders in how it develops. WE need to support it. Throwing negativity at what is a vitally needed and worthwhile project is counter-productive and against our community’s best interests. In fact, it would behoove us all, who have a little extra time, to Be A Part of the good changes in our community, to help get the word out, to help on fundraisers or just to help in any way we can in this effort.

Taurus Balzhoff
Guest
Taurus Balzhoff
7 years ago

Vitally needed and operated responsibly and sensibly, are two different things. I am busy working elsewhere at a healthcare facility capable of evolution and management, so you will have to develop it yourself. I tried to help SHCHD and was discarded, like hundreds of other former employees. I own property in the district, and I pay my tax. I have worked in several district hospitals, and ours, is a failure in so many ways.
Incidentally, your “property value” depends on pot, and a chronic shortage of housing. SHCHD has nothing to do with it, and practically nobody in Goobsterdam/Redway cares one whit about your little “healthcare facility”. You are full of the good talk about healthcare, but I am still involved in healthcare daily following 40 years in the field. From my point of view, JPH is a poor model, and poorly operated, and I call for some accounting prior to this latest scheme, over and above the usual cheer-leading.
There is no question that a facility is necessary in a growing area, but we already have Redwood Hospital and Howard Hospital, and we’ve got roads, ambulances and helicopters.
Locals often love their little hospitals. JPH does not seem to attract this sort of affection.

lost
Guest
lost
7 years ago

Parking?

Taurus Balzhoff
Guest
Taurus Balzhoff
7 years ago

Yes, park over by the orange plastic fence…

Shak
Guest
Shak
7 years ago

I’m no financial advisor, but when the busisness insider guru put us in Red Alert back in Oct about the market dropping fast towards 2000, signifying a huge crash if it drops lower, which it now has done, I’d be leary of taking out any sizeable loan right now. There’s a menacing reason the interest rates are so low & enticing.
Latest word: “November 2, 2016, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 17,959.64 and the S&P 500 at 2,097.94.”

Only love
Guest
Only love
7 years ago

Taurus, We need this hospital. Their mixed reputation is the result of things that happened in the past. This is virtually a new hospital. The staff is paid better. There’s new energy and new people. I believe in and support this project. If you could separate your disgruntled fired employee grudge, and look at the facts, I think you’d change your mind.

Taurus Balzhoff
Guest
Taurus Balzhoff
7 years ago

OK. I really don’t care what happened before, as I was paid, and I will work, whether for SHCHD or someplace else, as long as I care to.
I AM concerned about what happens next, since I reside in and pay tax to the district. Of course there are new people. This is about all JPH does well, turn over staff. Dream on all you want, spending big and aiming too high will create a disaster, in a community that does not support you.
A building does not make a hospital, building a hospital takes millions and millions of dollars, and SHCHD needs to show that it can afford this project. Being all loving is admirable, but dreamers are abundant in this county.

Spam
Guest
Spam
7 years ago

I’d like to know where all the money is coming from for all these capital improvements. The district has been spending money lately like a drunken sailor.