Ponder Crisis Care Location
Two locations in East Hampton Town are being considered as sites for a satellite emergency care center Southampton Hospital plans to build here.
One is part of 30 acres in the Wainscott School District, near the corner of Stephen Hand’s Path and Montauk Highway, now containing town recreation fields as well as the building housing the Child Development Center of the Hamptons, which is to close. The other, off Pantigo Road in East Hampton behind town office buildings, is the site of ballfields used by little leaguers and others.
East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said last Thursday that town officials had met with hospital officials and staff regarding the two town-owned properties and how they might accommodate the new center, which, it is anticipated, could be open in two to four years. The goal is to have the East Hampton satellite up and running before the hospital moves from its Southampton Village location farther west, to County Road 39.
New York State has promised a $10 million grant toward the center’s construction, and the hospital will raise money to cover the remainder of the cost. About $30 million will be needed for the project, it is estimated.
The hospital has “a pretty good idea of what they would need to build,” Mr. Cantwell said: a building of 15,000 to 20,000 square feet, with multiple emergency rooms, several rooms where patients could stay overnight, treatment and staff rooms, and, possibly, staff accommodations. A parking lot large enough for up to 150 cars would be needed, he said.
The center could also include laboratory and other services as well as doctor’s offices, Marsha Kenny, a hospital spokeswoman, has said.
The plan is to build at a site that is strategically located with respect to emergency calls, enabling ambulances from all the town’s fire districts to reach it quickly.
The hospital is evaluating both sites, Mr. Cantwell said, “to see if either of [them] works for them,” and the town will do the same.
The Little League field site, the supervisor said, is adjacent to both the East Hampton Healthcare Foundation’s medical offices facility and the Pantigo Place office condominiums. A planned move and sale of town office condos there, once an old building on the Town Hall campus is renovated, could free up additional office space for medical providers and other related services. An analysis would be undertaken of the effect on traffic in the area, access to the new center, and whether a traffic light might be needed at the Montauk Highway intersection.
“I think this is one of the most important things to happen with respect to medical services in East Hampton,” Mr. Cantwell said last week. A full-service medical care facility such as that planned has long been advocated by town officials and has grown in importance as traffic congestion has increased.
“For some time, we have been concerned that the distance between Southampton and the easternmost communities becomes longer still during the summer, when traffic is choking the local roads,” Robert Chaloner, the hospital president and chief executive officer, stated earlier this year.
As soon as the hospital is ready to discuss the plans, there will be an invitation to attend a public information session in East Hampton, Mr. Cantwell said.