Acute care site, cidery gain OK to move ahead

The University of Virginia Health System received permission Tuesday evening to move forward with plans for a new 50-bed hospital on Ivy Road that would care for long-term patients.

The Albemarle County Planning Commission approved a preliminary site plan for the UVa hospital’s proposed three-story, 87,627-square-foot Long Term Acute Care Hospital.

The facility — which would be located next to the hospital’s existing North-ridge outpatient building — aims to treat patients who are expected to have a hospital stay of at least 25 days.

These long-term patients are often awaiting an organ transplant or might be recovering from a transplant operation. In many cases, they are dependent on life-support systems, such as ventilators.

“Almost all of these patients are patients who are bed-ridden for long periods of time,” said Thomas Harkins, the health system’s chief of environmental health.

By transporting its long-term patients to the new facility, bed space would be freed up at the UVa Medical Center. The new facility would take patients from UVa and other hospitals throughout the region.

“To us, this is a very strategic project,” said Eric Strucko, chief financial officer of UVa’s Health Services Foundation, which is financing the $22 million project through bonds. “This is our way of managing our resources and our capital very effectively.”

Strucko is also a member of the county’s Planning Commission. He recused himself from the commission’s discussion and vote on the new hospital facility.

The project is one of several under way for the university’s health system. Also in the works is a project to add a six-story tower to the main hospital that would add 72 beds. Meanwhile, construction has begun on the new Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center at the site of the hospital’s recently demolished west parking garage.

In its debate over the new long-term hospital, Commis-sioner Linda Porterfield expressed concern about access to the project. Under its current plan, there would not be a stoplight at the entrance for ambulances.

“I have a real problem with building a hospital with an entrance for ambulances that doesn’t have a stoplight,” she said.

UVa officials said they anticipate that only two or three ambulances per day would transport patients to the facility. It would not have an emergency room, they said, and ambulances would rarely speed to and from the site with sirens blaring and lights flashing.

Sweet news for cidery

The Planning Commission also approved a request to allow Vintage Virginia Apples near North Garden to move forward with its plans to build a cidery and tasting room.

The panel voted unanimously to waive a site-plan requirement for the project, clearing the way for it to proceed.

Vintage Virginia Apples grows an estimated 250 varieties of rare and heirloom apples.

The company wants to build a 3,000-square-foot cider making facility and a 1,100-square-foot tasting room.

The Shelton family, which owns the orchard, sees hard apple cider as a largely untapped market in wine-loving Central Virginia. “It’s part of our agricultural and culinary point of view,” co-owner Charlotte Shelton said.