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SLCFly'n posted some great pics on the previous page of the hospital expansion currently under construction in Provo. This article deals with some of the additional expansion in the works,

Deseret Morning News
Tad Walch and Laura Hancock

PROVO - Utah Valley Regional Medical Center needs elbow room, and hospital managers are looking at interesting options that would change the face of Provo High School to fill short-term needs at UVRMC.

UVRMC is growing rapidly in a landlocked location in the middle of a population boom.. By 2020, the hospital projects 662,000 residents in Utah County,(a figure considered by many experts as far to conservative), up from 454,000 residents in 2005.

Parking is already a problem without additional expansion. Some employees are grumbling about parking miles away and catching hospital shuttles to work while the hospital builds a new outpatient clinic on the northeast corner of the block.

The construction of a parking terrace is evidence of expansion.

"They recognize they are in an urban setting and need to go up," Provo City Council chairman George Stewart said. "They need parking to do that."

IHC recently purchased an auto parts store that could make room for an outpaitent procedures building and physician office space, said Bryant Larsen, the hospital's director of community relations.

UVRMC needs more parking space and is looking south of 940 North, its southern boundary. In the past 15 years, IHC has purchased 13 of 17 homes in the block to the south, down to 880 North.

"We're negotiating on the remaining four," Larsen said.

The city Planning Commission would have to rezone the two rows of houses before IHC could pave over the land. Larsen said that IHC prefers parking lots to terraces because they are cheaper to build. "2020 is kind of our planning window," Larsen said.

Neighbors also prefer a parking lot to a parking garage, so IHC is looking east, too, specifically Fox Field at Provo High, the wide-open space between the hospital and high school, Larsen said. Fox Field is now home to high school soccer and softball games.

However, Provo School District officials, in informal talks with management at the nonprofit hospital group, said it will cost millions for the field.

"We have had some casual conversations, and our reply to (IHC) is Fox Field is always part of Provo High," Provo School District business manager Kerry Smith said. "You can't take it without all of Provo (High School), and the only way they'd ever consider (selling the high school is) they'd have to pay enough money to rebuild the high school on our land out west."

The district owns property near Utah Lake where a new high school could be built. High schools cost about $40 million to build.

The UVRMC campus is relatively tiny at 23 acres. IHC's McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden covers 62 acres and has services, patients and staff. IHC's new hospital in Murray is 80 acres, but it is larger than the Ogden and Provo hospitals, Larsen said.

In Provo there is no room for the hospital on the north because UVRMC's last bout of growth swallowed up all the territory to Bulldog Boulevard, or 1230 North, a busy street that acts as a natural boundary. To the west across busy 500 West are two IHC buildings: an employee day-care and a guest hotel for patients and their families. Other medical buildings belong to the Central Utah Clinic, which is not affiliated with UVRMC.

City leaders would like to see the hospital continue to grow.

"A lot of people complain because it is a non-taxable entity, but the hospital is a tremendous amenity to the community," Stewart said. "Companies look at schools, hospitals and parks and recreation opportunities for employees when they pick locations."

Stewart also said expansion in the area around the hospital is best.

"Otherwise they'd have to look off-site. That would be sad because it's great to have everything together."