Darlene Stromsted
During an interview last month Waterbury Hospital CEO Darlene Stromsted told the Waterbury Observer that high visibility was one of the factors being considered in deciding where to build a $400 million replacement hospital. The electrifying development of a new hospital in the city emerged in September when a capital investment company out of Texas, LHP Hospital Group, partnered with Saint Mary's Hospital, and Waterbury Hospital. The proposed merger is winding its way through the state permitting process, and the final site selection for the new, for-profit hospital, is expected to be announced within the next month. Mayor Neil O'Leary is lobbying hard to get the hospital built in downtown, and if his efforts are successful, could there be a more visible site than the one Saint Mary's Hospital sits on now? Every day there are 45,000 vehicles driving west on I-84 that sweep around a big curve and come face-to-face with Saint Mary's Hospital. If the new hospital is built on that site it will redefine the landscape in Waterbury, and project a modernized image of the Brass City. Photograph By Chelsea Murray (who was sitting in the passenger's seat)
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Chad Wable, the President and CEO of Saint Mary's Hospital, said the merger and site selection for a new hospital, “has gone from a complex deal, to a potentially mega-complex deal involving six parties. I am amazed at how aligned we are.”
Column By John Murray
Waterbury is engaged in a cultural collision that might define the city for the next 100 years. Good versus evil? No, it’s not that dramatic. It’s health care versus economic development.
Experts have scratched their heads for years wondering how a city the size of Waterbury could sustain two hospitals. The truth is, it couldn’t. For decades the city has witnessed a slow deterioration in the financial well being of Saint Mary’s Hospital, and Waterbury Hospital. They weren’t going to crash like airplanes tumbling out of the sky, it was more like a leak in an old wooden boat, slowly, almost imperceptibly, taking on water.
| Login or register to post comments | Tags: Chad Wable, Darlene Stromsted, Downtown Waterbury, Governor Dannell Malloy, John Rowland, LHP, Mayor Neil O'Leary, new $400 million hospital, Ron Pugliese, Saint Mary's Hospital, Waterbury Hospital