Senior citizen living facility to be built at former Jeannette District Memorial Hospital site
The vacant site of the former Jeannette District Memorial Hospital will have a new life as a $6 million, 200-bed senior citizen assisted-living facility that will be built and operated by a family-owned firm whose founder had ties to the hospital.
The Palms Communities, which operates The Palms at O'Neil in White Oak, purchased the 11.5-acre site for $820,000 for a facility that will be ideally situated to serve residents from Irwin to Greensburg and surrounding communities, said Craig Anlauf of North Huntingdon, chief executive and president.
“Jeannette is a great location. Our hope is to replicate it (the business model) sometime in the future,” Anlauf said at a ceremony at the site Thursday. He did not specify a time frame for construction.
The facility will have about 80 employees in the nursing, cafeteria, maintenance and custodial departments, Anlauf said.
The company first plans to refurbish a former dental office and convert it into a community center for seniors, he said. The sale includes a former dentist's office, a medical office occupied by Excela Health and a parking garage. Excela will continue to occupy about 65 percent of the medical office building.
Anlauf's father, Lawrence, a partner and founder of the business, served on the Jeannette hospital's community advisory board for about a decade in the 1990s and early 2000s. He said he was pleased to be able to build on the site and serve the community.
Excela had tried to sell the property for two years, said Scott Koscho, vice president of the health system's support services and a former Jeannette hospital employee.
“No one has been on the bench” in efforts to re-purpose the site, said Jennifer Miele, Excela spokeswoman.
Craig Anlauf said his company was looking to expand and had been considering the site for more than a year.
Excela purchased the hospital complex from the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System in April 2008 for $13.8 million, converted it into an outpatient center in 2010 and closed it in January 2011.
Robert Rogalski, chief executive officer, said Excela eventually did get something out of its investment. It acquired the Norwin Medical Commons in the sale and moved equipment from the Jeannette hospital to that facility, which was renamed Excela Square at Norwin.
“I think we got a very good return on our investment,” Rogalski said.
At the time of the purchase, the trend in health care was moving from inpatient care to outpatient services, Rogalski said.
Before Excela demolished the hospital in late 2014 at a cost of $2.7 million, there was interest from firms wanting to use the building as a movie studio and call center, said Michael Busch, chief operating officer.
But the hospital, built in 1959, did not lend itself to an easy retrofit, Busch said. Rather than let it deteriorate, Excela decided to demolish it and make the site more attractive to future developers, he said.
The hospital building was razed “so the community would not be left with a white elephant,” Rogalski said.
Jeannette Mayor Richard Jacobelli was pleased that the site finally will be put to use, five years after the hospital closed.
“We are excited to see what they are going to build here,” he said.
A former employee in the finance department at Jeannette hospital, Donna McCullough of Jeannette attended the ceremony to find out what will be built at the site where she worked for 45 years — from 1966 until the day it closed.
“I'm so happy. It's great for the city, great for the community,” said McCullough, who served on a committee to find a buyer before Excela took over.
Westmoreland County Commissioner Charles Anderson noted the remediation of the former Monsour Medical Center site on Route 30 is almost complete, and the Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp. has acquired the long-vacant Jeannette Glass plant.
“This is kind of the cherry on the top of the sundae,” Anderson said.
Joe Napsha is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-5252 or jnapsha@tribweb.com.
