Save Lakewood Hospital’s PJ Bennett provides a summary of recent news and interpretive context:
Three times now, the Mayor and LHA have turned down offers from entities interested in keeping Lakewood Hospital a hospital.
Pretty crazy, huh? They are bound and determined to turn the hospital into rubble for a medical office bldg., an under-glorified ‘ER’ and some retail. Wow.
Like I and many others have said, it’s all about the money.
Who in their right mind would refuse more money than what is being offered by Cleveland Clinic?
Anyway, here’s a link to a recent post on cleveland.com.
Mayors in other cities are fighting to keep hospitals in their cities, while the Mayor of Lakewood is giving ours away.
Let’s look at Marc’s shopping plaza. Remember when it was being touted as this awesome addition of Lakewood? Wow, a two-story anchor store! Uh huh.
We got Marc’s. And yes, it has 2 stories all right. The 2nd floor is offices.
The plaza serves some needs, but it’s nothing special.
Think about what kind of new retail would be willing to move into Lakewood.
Be realistic, now.
What we’d like to see, and what kind of shops would actually move in are two different things.
Not even Tower City or the Galleria downtown could make it, despite the number of people, who work there and go out for lunch daily.
It’s all about the money.
Someone(s) are getting something in exchange for being willing to destroy our hospital. Deals are being made.
Were you there, when Drs. Brian Donley and Stephen Jones repeatedly said at a City Council meeting how excited they were about building a Family Practice in Lakewood? However, they couldn’t say what services were going to be provided. They said that they needed to do some research.
Yeah, of course they were excited! Such a deal for them!
I’m saying it again. What I think will happen, as rumored at Fairview Hospital, is that when the new center in Lakewood is built, that the Center for Family Medicine at Fairview will move to Lakewood, allowing the Moll Cancer Center to expand, as they have been cramped for quite some time. (Both are located at 18200 Lorain Ave., across from the hospital. There’s nowhere for them to expand to due to the park system.)
This whole deal that Drs. Donley and Jones are excited about is about meeting the needs of Cleveland Clinic… Not the Needs of Lakewood.
Meanwhile, you can read the ‘Key Highlights of Master Agreement’ that was handed out at the City Council meeting this past Monday. Just click. In the 2nd paragraph of the post ‘New Cleveland Clinic plan….” click on the highlighted words PDF of the master agreement.
Jeanne Mackay wants to share this data she found from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Just apply it to the argument as to why hospitals should not be moved to county locations.
