Cooper plans an expansion, with 300 jobs

CAMDEN - Cooper University Hospital is planning a $117 million expansion of its downtown Camden site that officials say would create more than 300 jobs and would be one of the largest private investments in the city.

Cooper officials said the expansion was aimed at meeting the increasing demand for health-care services, from trauma treatment to critical care. The centerpiece would be a six-story, 140,000-square-foot pavilion between Cooper's two main buildings, inside the existing boundary of the hospital at Haddon Avenue, Benson Street, Martin Luther King Boulevard, and Sixth Street.

"We foresee nothing but continued growth in the future," said Cooper's chief executive officer, Christopher T. Olivia, who said the services Cooper now provides "in the past were only available by crossing over a bridge."

Cooper's average daily patient count has shot up from about 250 patients in 2000 to around 340 today. And its emergency room was built to handle 25,000 to 30,000 annual visits but now brims with 45,000, thanks in part to the 2001 closure of Virtua Health's emergency room in Camden, officials said.

With 3,500 workers, Cooper is the largest private employer in Camden.

Yesterday, the Camden County Improvement Authority's board approved issuing up to $90 million in bonds, backed by Camden County, to finance most of the project, though the hospital plans to borrow only about $80 million.

The rest of the funding would be a $12 million allocation from a $175 million state recovery package set aside for Camden, and $25 million in equity.

The Improvement Authority's executive director, Phil Rowan, said the expansion was the largest project the authority had ever financed.

The project, designed by the Ewing Cole architectural firm, is to begin in the summer with renovations to buildings on the Cooper campus, adding two operating rooms and five adult critical-care beds, moving the pediatric critical-care services to the Children's Regional Hospital, and adding another pediatric intensive-care bed for a total of six.

The emergency room would grow by about 12,000 square feet.

Cooper expects to break ground early next year on the new "patient care pavilion," which will sit in the center of the complex, extending north. The building will house 30 more critical-care beds and 60 private acute-care patient rooms, more than doubling Cooper's private patient-room capacity.

The hospital's 76-year-old Sarah Cooper building, which houses office space, will be demolished to make way for the pavilion.

Eventually, Cooper hopes to demolish its 30-year-old parking garage in order to present a more welcoming front to motorists turning from the Admiral Wilson Boulevard onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, commonly known as Mickle Boulevard.

That would fit into the current downtown initiative to rehabilitate the city's entrances, as well as a plan to beautify Martin Luther King, Olivia said. "We're trying to fit into the city's long-term plan."

Cooper officials are still working out details of where to locate a replacement parking facility, but are eyeing a vacant lot the hospital owns west of its campus.

The Camden Economic Recovery Board must approve the plans before Cooper can receive its $12 million in state funding. The rest of its state allocation, $1 million, is going toward construction of a new downtown headquarters for CAMcare, a federally qualified health center.

"This is a major commitment to the city," said Cooper spokesman Gary Young, who noted that the Camden recovery legislation required Cooper to spend only $5 million of matching funds to receive its state grant. "We're making a statement that the most sophisticated health-care facility in South Jersey will be located in the city of Camden."