The Orleans Parish Hospital Service District will not meet a Monday deadline to buy the old Methodist Hospital and other properties as part of its effort to reopen a community hospital.
But lawyers for the hospital district and Universal Health Services Inc. are working to secure an extension for a preliminary purchase agreement first inked in May, said Dr. Kevin Stephens, chairman of the hospital board and the city's health director.
Stephens and Kenya Smith, an adviser to Mayor Ray Nagin, said the district wants to continue negotiations with Universal as they get results from various appraisals and await final environmental assessments.
"I don't want to give false hope but I don't want to give reason for no hope," Stephens said. "Nothing is over until it's over. I still think this is going to happen."
Messages left at Universal Health Services corporate headquarters in King of Prussia, Pa., were not returned.
The estimated $170 million project calls for renovating the old Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital into an 80-bed hospital to serve more than 80,000 people who have resettled in eastern New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish since Hurricane Katrina.
The hospital had been a 300-bed facility before the storm.
The Legislature created the hospital district board in 2006. The area has been without an emergency room and hospital since Katrina, leaving residents with as much as a 30-minute drive to the nearest hospitals in Slidell or downtown New Orleans.
The preliminary deal with Universal did not set a purchase price but called for the hospital district to buy the old Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital, the 29-acre Lakeland Medical Pavilion campus and Lake Forest Ambulatory Surgical Center.
The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority has hired appraisers in compliance with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations concerning Community Development Block Grants. Stephens declined to say what value those appraisers have put on the property.
"We're just trying to reconcile all the numbers," he said.
The city has set aside $40 million in block grant money for the deal and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu has secured an additional $1 million attached to a comprehensive spending bill that recently cleared the Senate.
Universal rejected the district's initial offer of $30 million. Stephens said that money will be enough, leaving about $130 million that must come from somewhere else.
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Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com