It's good that Inspira Health Network will spend $100,000 to study what to do with its complex in the city once its in-patient hospital closes. Be careful of the details, though.
Doubters that Inspira Health Network has any use for its Woodbury hospital complex once it shuts its in-patient facility there should be cheered by news that the health-care operator will spend $100,000 on a re-purposing study.
Inspira plans to move its Woodbury acute-care hospital to a new site in Harrison Township, and has already OK'd a deal to buy land for the new building from Rowan University.
Although Inspira has insisted all along that it won't shutter its Woodbury emergency room, and plans to keep a number of medical specialty offices, many Woodbury area residents view Inspira's partial retreat as a case of abandonment.
Know this: Inspira wouldn't toss around $100,000 if its only intent was to put the Red Bank Avenue and Broad Street complex into mothballs.
The devil, as they say, in the details. Public officials should be aware that the study could offer Inspira an escape hatch. The marketing data could suggest a variety of uses, including non-medical ones.
What happens if a study recommends putting multi-family housing and retail stores on all 14.6 acres?
The city planning board is slated May 18 to add the Inspira site to an existing redevelopment zone. Before the city council endorses that move, it should get Inspira's firm commitment to maintain geographically essential emergency services, as well as the roughly 500 jobs (out of 1,600 current ones) that Inspira says it will keep in Woodbury.
The last thing Woodbury needs is a shaky, turn-key deal with an officially anointed, tax-concession-receiving private re-developer to build dense, public-revenue-eating housing. Developers always add a commercial component to generate property taxes without requiring expensive services. Look at the "success" of Broad Street retail frontage at the Gloucester County Justice Complex garage or the H.H. Green building, and you'll be wary of such promises.
The upcoming study will get some government oversight, but it's a bit of a question mark. Inspira has hired -- voluntarily, we presume -- the Gloucester County Improvement Authority as "project manager" for the "independent reviews." The GCIA has been enough of a patronage pit for Democrat Party officials who run county government to foster some concerns. Sounds as if there will be some consulting work for party contributors.
That said, no one can expect every square inch of Inspira-Woodbury to remain as a medical facility. If and when the neighborhood gets a station on the long-planned Camden-Glassboro light rail line, new housing nearby will be much in demand. So will walking-distance jobs, and they don't all need to be health-care ones. But it could be years before the trains start running.
The future of Inspira's Woodbury campus can be bright if it combines existing medical uses with other so-called "smart growth." Be cautious, though, of any study that rubber-stamps some predetermined plan currently known only to key politicians and well-connected redevelopers.
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