By the numbers
$150,000: Cost for Ohio Valley Surgical Hospital to purchase the former Robertson Building.
250: Number of employees at the Ohio Valley Surgical Hospital.
6: Amount of acres at the hospital, including the Robertson building.
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The Ohio Valley Surgical Hospital has purchased the Robertson building and plans to again expand its footprint in downtown Springfield.
The hospital bought the nearly 153,000-square-foot building at 14 N. Lowry Ave. from Zeus Building Inc. for $150,000. Ohio Valley’s current facility includes the $15 million surgical hospital at 100 W. Main St. and the $5 million medical office building at 140 W. Main St.
It currently has about 250 employees.
The hospital is still formulating its plans for the future of the additional property, said Ohio Valley Chief Executive Officer Steve Eisentrager, and is working with city officials to add more parking for employees and beautify the neighborhood around the hospital.
“There’s nothing concrete yet,” Eisentrager said.
The hospital has about 100 employees who park across the street or on different blocks, he said, to allow patients to be able to pull directly onto campus close to the medical buildings.
The Roberston building would expand the facility’s footprint from about four to six acres, Eisentrager said. The hospital will spend the next two to three months working on updating the plan for its campus.
The purchase allows the hospital to keep from being land locked, he said.
“It creates a lot more options and it takes the pressure off,” Eisentrager said. “We want to have a plan in place and look at all of our options.”
The city has worked with the surgical hospital about its plans, said Assistant City Manager and Director of Economic Development Tom Franzen, but hasn’t discussed the future of the Robertson Building.
“As they look long-term at adding specialties and facilities, it’s natural to look around you and see if you have the ability and capacity to grow,” Franzen said.
Zeus Office Building Inc. and its agent Tom Lagos sold the site to Ohio Valley. It sits across the street from the hospital’s medical office building.
Lagos declined to comment. Zeus bought the Robertson Building in 1996 for $33,000.
A demolition permit was issued to Zeus to tear down a small portion of the building in May, but not the entire structure, according to the city’s planning and zoning division.
Three other new downtown health care facilities have opened in recent years: the $275 million Springfield Regional Medical Center, the $10 million Mental Health Services facility and the $10 million Springfield Regional Cancer Center.
The downtown surgical hospital had been a brownfield site before it was redeveloped and opened in June of 2009.
In 2012, Ohio Valley opened a $5 million medical office building, 140 W. Main St., which houses imaging, physical therapy and pre-admission testing. The hospital also operates an administrative building at 72 and 74 W. Main St.
The hospital is a great amenity and attracts more development to downtown, Franzen said.
“This is what folks envisioned when they talked about making downtown a center of medical office investments,” Franzen said. “We see it as a positive and we’re going to do what we can to support it.”
Robertson Incorporated took possession of the property in 1918 and used its as a manufacturing facility for the Robertson Can Co., which closed in the mid-1990s shortly before Zeus purchased the building. It housed several small businesses over the years, including the Ghost Hunting Source.
The ghost hunting store, located in the front portion of the building on North Lowry Avenue, moved out in February, owner Darin Hough said. The business still does tours, events and an online business, but is still searching for retail space. The store also used the Robertson Building for ghost hunting tours, including for many people from other states and Canada.
“We had good times there,” Hough said.
The building has been discussed as a candidate for reuse over the years, including converting the building into loft apartments. It wasn’t listed as part of an initial list of sites to be considered for the local historic register, which was released in April.
Local preservationist Melissa Tuttle, a member of the Springfield Historic Landmarks Commission, would like to see the building reused, not demolished and converted into a parking lot. With a wealth of surface parking lots, the downtown is becoming friendlier to vehicles than pedestrians, she said.
Other hospitals throughout the region have built parking garages for patients, she said.
“I wish the hospitals in Springfield would think a little bit different and be more considerate of the city’s history,” Tuttle said.
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